The Big Business of Anti-Sex Trafficking

by Jacqueline S. Homan,
author of Without Apology

Combatting the scourge of human trafficking has become the sexy, trendy newest cause for privileged opportunists in need of their newest feel-good activism fix as they seek to profit by wrapping themselves in the cloak of social justice. Of course, those whom are the very core of this cause—the sex trafficking victims (or exited women) themselves—are without real, adequate and appropriate help in terms of income support, medical care, education, job training and job placement to regain control of their destiny to rebuild their lives and live with dignity while trying to do so.

Restoring trafficked women to “normalized” status in society is an important goal, but there is an enormous resistance to that on the part of society, including many “allies” that will not stop their privilege-clinging and power-overing to actually facilitate restoration. Sadly, even most such “allies” look down on adult prostituted women who started out as trafficked under-aged girls.

The very women and girls whom this movement is supposed to be about are exploited for their stories and then discarded and thrown under the bus by most “allies”, including many well-heeled academics who’ve been enriched with chair endowments and many other social prizes and rewards after prostituted/exited women’s stories of tremendous suffering have helped pave the career paths of those who enjoy all the status, prestige and prosperity in the name of “speaking for” downtrodden, marginalized women.

After decades of throwing the poorest, most marginalized women away with misogynistic laws and policies of “benign neglect” tantamount to social Darwinism, everybody suddenly wants to cash in on the big business of helping trafficked women and girls. How odd, considering that it was this very same male supremacist society that threw away poor marginalized women and girls into the prostitute caste in the first place—first by ripping away what meager, inadequate threadbare safety net that did exist for destitute women in the name of “personal responsibility”, and second by continuing to discriminate against women for good-paying blue-collar “men’s jobs” that don’t require an expensive college education, and third by reaffirming male entitlement to women’s bodies as disposable reproductive goods and sex goods.

The Obama administration has unveiled a plan inviting public participation for helping to fight human trafficking, and part of the plan is to open funding for battered women’s shelters whose funding was recently cut by the 2010 Congress. More troubling is that most of these domestic violence shelters refuse to take prostituted women who want to exit but who are also destitute and have nowhere to go. Funding for emergency shelters that turn away trafficked women and under-aged girls is funding that won’t be given to shelters run by anti-trafficking groups that help the trafficked.

Cash-strapped survivor-run and/or secular NGO’s that are geared towards providing real material help to survivors get little to none of the funding from the US Department of Health & Human Services through its Refugee Resettlement Office. Non-profit groups that get the lion’s share of the annual grants from the Office of Refugee Resettlement are nearly all anti-abortion Christian organizations that are huge, deeply entrenched corporations with Catholic Charities and Polaris Project getting the most funds.

This is problematic because faith-based charities refuse to provide abortion care to trafficked women and leave them no choice except to be further physically and psychologically violated by their rapists-johns by forcing them to endure a full term of incapacitating pregnancy and a traumatic, grueling childbirth—thus, continuing the rape and torture. Forcing women to get/remain pregnant against their will when they don’t want to go through it has been the time-honored way that men have oppressed and continue to oppress women, using our vulnerability to pregnancy to keep us from having an equal opportunity to have the same good jobs that are automatically handed to men, denying us full citizenship and equal civil and human rights—which is what fuels the sex trade in the first place because it limits women’s opportunities and rights.

If it’s wrong for women and girls to be sexually exploited, how is it NOT also wrong for them to be reproductively exploited by their “rescuers” for the benefit of Christian adoption agencies and rich, white childless couples who are buying the “right” to further exploit those victims with forced factory-farm reproduction to provide them with babies—free grata?

How does this make them any different than the johns who bought the “right” to first use these girls’ bodies for forced sex to provide him with his precious orgasm?

There is something radically wrong with the system when the non-profit mega corporations (aka “faith-based” charities) that enjoy the backing of well-heeled patriarchal, misogynistic religious powerhouses get all the federal grant money from the US Department of Health & Human Services while cash-strapped secular and survivor-run non-profits started by impoverished exited women who are the real human trafficking experts can’t get funding to help destitute survivors and women who want to exit prostitution but can’t due to nearly insurmountable barriers.

A trafficked teen girl who has no choice becomes that 22 year old drug-addicted woman found in a dumpster with her throat cut from ear to ear because of being thrown away by a bootstrap-happy society that pushed her into the arms of traffickers in the name of “personal responsibility” while refusing to give her real equal opportunities and provide a social floor through which no one can fall.

The Exploitation Continues After Exiting

Now not all men are bad, and neither are all Christians. But the fact remains that the majority are comfortable with the status quo because it privileges them at women’s expense, or else there would NOT be a right-wing War on Women where it is women (especially POOR women) who punished with gratuitous cruelty for men’s sense of entitlement, greed, and debauchery. And there would not be a pandemic of sex trafficking fueled by male demand secured by female poverty and disenfranchisement due to discrimination backed by 6,000 years of institutionalized patriarchy.

People with privilege really don’t want to upset the status quo—it may mean having to relinquish some of their own privileges that come at the expense of the disprivileged. Even within the abolition movement, there is a LOT of privilege-clinging and power-overing.

Exploiting women as sex goods and as reproductive chattel are inseparable. It’s the same end game: objectification, reproductive enslavement, sexual terrorism and cruelty towards women to support male supremacy and male privilege to benefit men at women’s expense, suffering and misery.

Forced pregnancy/childbirth was the main linchpin that upheld the plantation slavery system in the antebellum South. African slave women were forced to breed. All for men’s sexual AND economic benefit at women’s expense and suffering. And even though not all men are porn-consuming, prostitute-abusing pigs, the fact remains that ALL men benefit from this sadistic, exploitative hierarchical system of unearned privileges in which women are kept economically, sexually, and socially oppressed in the ‘one-down’ position. And poor white women (“poor white trash”) have also been convenient throw-aways into the sex class so that men could have a free license to be sexually sadistic predators.

It’s no secret that most who are thrown away into the sex caste are those who either lack class privilege or race privilege or both. Poor men get offered helping hand up and job opportunities that are denied to women; poor women get told to take our clothes off—that being “only a whore” is the ONLY place in society for us, the only “option” if we don’t want to starve or be homeless. Or end up disabled or dead for lack of health care from jobless poverty due to discrimination. This is also how you get so many rescued trafficked women who, out of utter despair, reluctantly return to the traffickers and johns.

Traffickers tell their victims that there is no other place for them, that society won’t accept them and treat them nicely. Unfortunately, the lack of support, help, social acceptance, and a leg up for poor, marginalized exited women faced with no alternative except to return to prostitution gives this credence: Everybody (including many “allies” and “rescuers”) in society proves the traffickers right.

Almost all of the faith-based organizations that get the lion’s share of federal grant money only help a select few kids that make good photo opportunities for their charity’s fundraising PR. What kind of message does this send to trafficked teens and adult women who desperately want to exit prostitution that they were trafficked into before reaching that magical age of 18?

Meanwhile, poor adult women who either have already exited (or who want to exit but feel trapped because they’re physically and/or financially unable to exit) never get anything because there’s this idea that grown women cannot suffer and therefore don’t matter. Adult women are just discarded and written off as having made their “choice.” Almost all anti-trafficking groups focus only on children and ignore the women.

The Cost to Society of Ignoring Poor Prostituted Adult Women

Conservative estimates based on limited data collection place the percentage of sex trafficking victims with HIV at about 25%, but actual numbers may be much higher. According to the Office of the Secretariat of the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS, 63% of HIV-positive sufferers aged 15-24 are women.

A 2007 study published in JAMA showed that 38% of a study group of 287 sex trafficked Nepalese women and girls tested positive for HIV. The study also showed that the younger the trafficked girl, the higher the likelihood of being exposed to HIV since johns specifically request younger girls (under age 15) at brothels and johns often refuse to wear condoms and the prostituted women and girls realistically cannot compel them to.

Many other regions have much higher rates than that, such as Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside where 75% of prostituted women and girls are HIV-positive. Women and children who are trafficked for commercial sex experience a tenfold risk of contracting HIV compared to any other subgroup of the population. The average age of entry into the sex trade for females is 12-14 years of age. The US is one of the top three source and destination hubs for sex trafficking.

According to the US State Department, 80% of human trafficking victims are women and girls, and according to the Harvard School of Public Health study authored by Dr. Jay Silverman, the HIV infection rate exceeded 60% among girls forced into prostitution prior to age 15 from the 2007 sample of 287 Nepalese women and girls. The public health consequence, and ultimately, the devastation to society caused by male demand for commercial sex is astronomical.

“Addressing the widely accepted male demand for commercial sex is critical to ending this modern day form of female slavery,” Silverman said.

As sex trafficking survivor Lisa Bouvet, said: “Saying someone chose to become a prostitute is like saying someone chose to jump off the roof but no one mentioned that the building was on fire.”

Those who manage to exit the sex trade also face a substantial risk of being re-trafficked if they are from a country that lacks adequate social and economic support systems because of the contempt, scorn, derision, neglect and social rejection suffered by the prostituted. Many exited women and girls, out of sheer desperation, re-enter the sex trade when they’re left with nowhere else to go and no real social and economic support because of the criminalization and stigma that comes with being a prostituted woman. And when that happens, chances of being able to re-escape and survive are almost zero.

Many exited women are unable to afford proper medical care and due to total social exclusion and marginalization, they have almost zero employment opportunities and no hope of economically fending for themselves. Almost no one will hire exited women due to the social stigma alone, and finding some middle class Prince Charming to rescue her from utter destitution by marrying her and supporting her so she has a home, food, and medical care is definitely off the table.

As an aside, a study of johns showed that upwards of 60% are married men with families—they bought prostituted women so they could get away with doing to a woman what they would never be able to do to their own wives. If you torture and kill one of the “madonnas”, you will likely get prison; if you torture and kill one of the “whores”, you will likely get a free pass and a pat on the back.

Convicted Child Molesters Get More Social Acceptance and Better Economic Support For Re-entering Society Than Sex Trafficking Survivors

According to Dr. Brian Conway of the University of British Columbia, people who contract HIV—the virus that causes AIDS—can live very, very long and high quality lives without ever developing full blown AIDS as long as their CD4 (white blood cell) count remains well above 200 on medical therapy. But the vast majority of exited women struggle in abject poverty, and in countries like the US and the impoverished regions of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, destitute human trafficking survivors don’t have access to adequate medical treatment or any social income support to be able to live with dignity. Consequently, the sex trafficking survivors who contracted HIV from johns and traffickers are slapped with a cruel, torturous death sentence: slow, painful death from AIDS related complications.

Two major factors that negatively impact CD4 cell count are fatigue and stress. The stress from having to suffer in utter poverty and complete social exclusion due to stigma, compounded by the trauma levels of anyone who survived the amount of violence and torture as prostituted women have, only serves to intensify the agonizing progression of untreated HIV, which is hallmarked by ravaging and unrelenting opportunistic infections such as pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) which causes fatal treatment-resistant pneumonia for which medical intervention does not come cheap.

Untreated HIV is a certain death sentence, but it is a very slow and torturous one that surpasses the level of torture that would be permissible at Guantanamo. Treatment of HIV requires a series of antiretroviral drug therapies, of which there are several classes—each one inhibiting the mutation and multiplication of the HIV virus at different stages of cell invasion in the HIV virus’s life cycle. Often, several classes must be combined to effectively treat this devastating retrovirus which targets CD4 cells, injects healthy CD4 cells with its genetic code (RNA) which is then used by the reverse transcriptase enzyme to build HIV DNA.

The HIV DNA is injected into the CD4 cell’s DNA by the integrase enzyme, establishing HIV infection in the CD4 cell. When the HIV-infected CD4 cell reproduces, the HIV DNA is activated. This is how a retrovirus like HIV destroys the immune system and causes full blown AIDS—by attacking the body’s white blood cells. And this is why multi-faceted therapy drug schedules are needed to treat and subdue or limit the HIV virus’s activity within the body.

None of the current medical technologies for treating HIV can protect an HIV-positive person’s sexual partner from contracting HIV no matter how well the infected person responds to the antiretroviral therapy. So an HIV-positive john with access to good medical care and who is able to improve his healthy CD4 cell count and limit the devastation of HIV in his body, who then turns around and buys rape-on-demand sex from poor prostituted women (and likely refuses to wear a condom) then infects the trafficking victim who is unable to compel him to wear a condom—never mind dictate any other terms and conditions of the sex-for-money transaction. In fact, it is usually in attempting to refuse a particular sexual act that gets prostituted women murdered—if not by the john who wanted to hurt her as part of the “services” he paid for, then by the traffickers in whose eyes a “troublesome” woman’s life isn’t even worth eight cents.

Unlike the traffickers and the johns on sex tourism “vacations” at home and abroad who paid for the “right” to get “you-do-what-I-say” sex from prostituted women and children, poor trafficked and/or exited women that contracted HIV from these self-entitled sexually sadistic men that refused to wear condoms have little to no hope at all of living a long, high quality life if they cannot get proper care due to being from a country in which women do not enjoy equal rights with men, and a country that either does not have the medical technology of antiretroviral therapy available, or that does not provide good medical care to those unable to pay for it because of that country not having universal health care.

To be sentenced to death from full blown AIDS as a direct result of first being forcibly infected with it by cruel, sexually sadistic men that are carriers of HIV and secondly by lack of access to the same quality of medical care to adequately treat HIV that their class-privileged HIV-positive rapists enjoy, meets the definition of torture and crimes against humanity.

In the US, convicted serial killers sentenced to death row get more sympathy and avenues for legal redress and concern for their rights than an adult sex trafficking victim who struggled to exit “the life” against all odds. Regardless of where one stands on the death penalty issue, the fact is that the way the state is permitted to execute a convicted serial killer is restricted by Constitutional laws against cruel and unusual punishment and torture—which is why no one is executed by being drawn and quartered or burned alive at the stake like they were in medieval Europe.

It is also why the state cannot (in theory, anyway) execute someone with biological terrorism, and neither can an individual resort to that under Stand Your Ground Laws. Bioterrorism is precisely what traffickers and johns are doing by deliberately infecting prostituted women with a fatal, incurable STD. Women and children did not enter prostitution with HIV—traffickers and johns infected them with it.

It is a crime against humanity for any other identifiable group to be targeted for death by sexual torture, destitution and bioterrorism—except women. Do the math: 95% of the prostituted are women and girls, 94% of those living below poverty suffering without basic human needs are women and girls. Women comprise 52% of the population yet women have less than 2% of all good-paying blue-collar skilled trades jobs and science careers due to institutionalized sexism and discrimination. Men comprise 88% of the government leadership and lawmaking bodies, and men comprise 98% of the top 1% of the financial elite. Although 5% of the prostituted are boys and men, nearly 100% of the sex buyers are men. Money, privilege and power are gendered. And so is the institution of prostitution.

There are upwards of about 10 million trafficked women and girls trapped in prostitution in the US and only 200 shelter beds nationwide for women and girls who desperately want to exit but cannot. So the final question remains: will destitute exited women get helped with income support to live with a little bit of human dignity while they struggle to heal and rebuild their lives, or will this new anti-trafficking plan by the Obama administration merely serve as a boon for large charity executives? If this country is serious about the sex trafficking problem, then funds for destitute trafficking victims payable to the destitute exited women whether they exited 20 minutes ago or 20 years ago must come first before anyone else’s enrichment. What is needed is: income for destitute exiting/exited women to live with dignity as they try to get on their feet and rebuild their lives, medical care, dental care, therapy, advanced educations and/or vocational training and REAL job placement—guaranteed job slots for poor marginalized exited women.

Women Who Care About Women Don’t Bat For Team Patriarchy

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

A “feminist” scolded her sisters for being righteously indignant about the capo-like behavior of patriarchy’s handmaidens and honorary men, saying that being critical of women who deliberately throw their sisters under the wheels of patriarchy’s shit train distracts from the primary focus of feminism. She says that discrediting these capos doesn’t do anything to help women as a class.

Well, I have a LOT to say about that.

Although it’s true that women didn’t initiate patriarchy, and although it’s also true that some women’s bad behavior is not the same as men’s behavior under male supremacy because of the undeniable power differential, failing to publicly discredit honorary men does a far greater disservice to feminism and to women as a class by giving these handmaidens a free pass just because “they’re women, too.”

Women who use their relative, albeit male-bequeathed, privileges to slam the glass ceiling’s trap door shut on all their other sisters, hurting disempowered and marginalized women the most, and who are NOT challenged for it by feminists, isolate and silence women whom they are consciously and deliberately helping the patriarchy to oppress and crush underfoot. It is women like that, especially if they claim to be feminists (which is supposed to be about liberating ALL women from male oppression) who are harming the feminist mission of women’s liberation — far more so than the het women and libfems who are fighting in the trenches for women’s liberation from male-imposed PIV and childbirth chattel slavery.

What would a poor, homeless teen girl think about “feminists” and feminism in general if women like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Sharron Angle, or Kathleen Passidomo are given a free pass by feminists for using their positions of power and privilege within patriarchy to force her to give birth to her rapist’s progeny because these successful, highly educated and politically well-positioned women acting as honorary men were defended by those who claim to be all about ending women’s oppression?

Would that woman or girl who is forced to go through pregnancy and childbirth against her will, no matter the physical and psychological harm to her, feel included as part of the very same oppressed group that feminists claim to be trying to liberate?

The Rosetta Stone of women’s oppression by men as a class IS forced pregnancy/childbirth, whether a woman is het or lesbian. And just because a woman is het, does that mean that forced childbirth is something she “deserves?”

When a 13-year-old girl asked Sharron Angle, a Nevada Republican Congressional candidate and retired public school teacher, if she would bend her “pro-life” stance to make an exception for rape and asked what she would say to a 13 yr old rape victim who got pregnant, Angle told the girl that the victim should be forced to carry that pregnancy to term and “just learn how to make lemonade out of the lemons life handed her.” What kind of message about feminism and feminists is being sent to women and girls when some feminists silently defend (or excuse) women like Sharron Angle for “being a victim of patriarchy, too?”

What message does it send to the average woman or underage girl who doesn’t want to be forced to give birth against her will when the liberators of women won’t speak out against women using their administrative, judicial or legislative (or even their basic voting power) to pass laws to force childbirth on her, when the liberators don’t even pretend to fight for HER human rights — namely the right to NOT be conscripted into forced organ donation (which is what forced pregnancy/childbirth really is). The right to bodily autonomy and bodily integrity form the first pillar of bioethics, and also form the basis of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and are outlined the United Nations Convention Against Torture. In fact, the legal language in the UN Convention Against Torture defines “torture” to include “rape, sexual assault, and forced pregnancy.”

When former vice presidential candidate and Alaskan governor Sarah Palin passed a law in her state forcing rape victims to pay for their own rape kits at about $1,200 a clip and signed other laws that put access to birth control and safe legal abortion out of reach for underage girls and poor and working class women, what kind of message to the majority of women — who are far more socio-economically class-oppressed than Sarah Palin on top of being sex-oppressed — are feminists sending when they say that Sarah Palin isn’t to blame for using her office to strip the majority of our sisters of basic human rights, including her own daughter’s, just to further her political career in patriarchy?

How is defending women who are enemies of women helpful to feminism’s goal of ending male oppression of women? How many “average Janes” is it acceptable to sacrifice so as to not hurt the feelings of a few honorary men and handmaidens who sacrificed their own daughters on the patriarchal altar of this phallocracy?

Most women and girls don’t have a fraction of the privileges and power (even if it is male-assigned) that Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, Michele Bachmann, and Kathleen Passidomo (who publicly called 11-year-old gang rape victims “prostitutes”) have. How is throwing the majority of women and girls under the bus consistent with the core tenets and principles of feminism? In order to stay focused on liberating women as a class from the oppression by men as a class, feminists cannot excuse or defend the harm inflicted by these honorary men by saying that “they are not like men.” That defeats the whole purpose of feminism. Putting it bluntly: It’s pissing up a crooked rope.

You cannot help women as a class by throwing the majority of women and girls under the bus for the sake of a few handmaidens who don’t want to be liberated (and who don’t want the rest of us to be liberated either) because they’re more than happy to serve in the ranks of patriarchy’s phalanx of Stepford capos because they’ve sold their souls for some lentil soup in exchange for doing men’s dirty work.

That “feminists can’t criticize other women” crap is precisely what helped cause the 30+ year erosion of the few hard-won rights for ALL women to have access to birth control and safe legal abortion (which are major life-savers for women) to the point where we’re at today where not only are America’s poorest women (who number in the tens of millions) without access to birth control and safe legal abortion, but rape victims are being FORCED to give birth against their will while lawmakers and others in positions or privilege and power have denied America’s poorest women food, cash support, and medical care on top of legalizing rape [e.g., Pennsylvania House Bill No. 2718] by making it practically impossible for a woman to prove she was raped — in a society that says she “asked for it”; a society that threw 300+ women in prison to date for the “crime” of having a stillbirth or miscarriage. A society that supports rapists over victims, and tells junior high and high school girls that they must share their locker room, shower and sauna with someone who has a penis in the name of “transgendered rights.” A society in which women suffering fatal pregnancy complications are left to suffer and die and “bleed out” in 1 out of 6 US hospital emergency rooms as a matter of policy because some hospital administrators’/executives’/doctors’ right to “freedom of religion” trumps pregnant women’s human rights to life, bodily autonomy, and bodily integrity — contravening the federal law that was supposed to prevent these abuses ( the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA), as well as the United Nations Convention against Torture, which the United States ratified in 1994.

The War on Women was not launched by a couple of fringe crackpots in the Republican Party without a huge groundswell of entrenched misogyny and self-centeredness of a whole society of accomplices — including women with a significant degree of political clout, and social and financial capital who, in the name of feminism, defend the enemies of feminism and in doing so, silence the very people whom feminism is supposed to be helping: the overwhelming majority of women who are stuck between the shit and the stink of having to make choiceless choices within the dictates of patriarchy just to be able to survive.

And what are these choiceless choices? Answer: Survival sex (the sex trade). Or attaching themselves to male partners and breadwinners under male terms and conditions in order to survive. Compulsory PIV sex without condoms. Mandatory childbirth (for lack of access to birth control and abortion), which even reduces what few low-paying job opportunities within the pink-collar ghetto that are available to most women which in turn forces economic dependence on abusive, selfish males or the practically non-existent and grossly inadequate welfare benefits (which poor women are begrudged).

Why defend the female enemies of women who are the willing and eager tools of patriarchy when they could have chosen NOT to be, in the name of an abstract ideology that is not being put into real down-to-earth practice to help ALL women? How does that extinguish the inferno of patriarchy when it silences the victims of it, leaving the majority of women behind to fend for themselves while telling them in so many words, “Sorry sister, you’re on your own to liberate yourself” — just because the delicate sensibilities of a few faux feminists, handmaidens and honorary men are more important than ending patriarchy by attacking the oppressor (men) AND the oppressor’s willing agents?

Women who care about women don’t bat for Team Patriarchy, or defend those who do — even though women are not like men.

Class Justice As A Cover For Preserving Male Privilege

by Jacqueline S. Homan, author: Classism for Dimwits and Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie

Some class justice activists claim that “rich liberals” have alienated white working class males and poor whites. There is an element of truth in that. Poor whites who have been economically excluded and socially marginalized are at the bottom of the pile: many class justice activists say that poor whites are not “cool” enough for the liberal elite who brag about their “nice African-American friends” but never about their “nice poor white friends.” But too often, class justice activists have a bad habit of using class justice as a vehicle for driving the interests of men to the front of the line with white men leading the parade while demanding that women and minorities — many whom are far worse off than poor white guys — shut up about our rights that are always getting trampled on by white males up and down the socio-economic ladder. Women and minorities are silenced in these Leftist class justice groups with the “Oppression Olympics” cudgel wielded by white dudes that are much better off than women and minorities within the same social class because white dudes have power over women and minorities and that power is the right to dominate — something that is conferred by white male privilege. 

Working class white males are not subjected to forced organ donation at peril to their health, wellbeing and lives — which is what forced pregnancy/childbirth really amounts to — as punishment for having sex and gratifying men’s sexual “needs”; or being raped. In fact, poor white males and working class white males who commit rape are more than likely to get away with it because our male-supremacist society holds that women and girls that are raped somehow “asked for it”, and are often forced to bear rape progeny against their will in “pro-life” America where access to abortion is practically non-existent since the Congressmen elected by white working class males claim that women can’t get pregnant from a “legitimate rape” because women’s bodies have a way to “shut that whole thing down” and if pregnancy should occur from rape, it’s a “gift from God.”

White working class males are not forced to suffer in utter agony for several days in hospitals and even forced to die cruel and torturous deaths that are entirely preventable as a matter of some moralistic policy that is selectively invoked to deny them preventive medical care that would ameliorate their suffering and save their lives. They’re not left to “bleed out” in emergency rooms because of “pro-life” laws and policies that deprive them of their right to life, liberty, bodily autonomy and bodily integrity. 

Working class white males are not targeted for police brutality simply for being out in public. Had Trayvon Martin been a working class white male as opposed to a black male, he’d be alive today because white men don’t get gunned down by neighborhood watchmen for walking home from the store because of wearing hoodies while packing cell phones, iced tea, and candy. 

White working class males also rape, impregnate and batter white working class women while supporting lawmakers, governors, attorney generals and judges who pass laws that force women to be vulnerable to unwanted and risky pregnancies, and force women and girls to give birth against our will regardless of how we feel about it and regardless of the harm to us.  And white working class men have the moxy to tell poor women that our basic human right to bodily autonomy is a less important “side issue” in the male supremacist scheme of things.

White working class males in the class justice camp deliberately play the class card to ensure that women and minorities who are oppressed by male privilege and white privilege respectively are once again side-lined, back-benched, and marginalized while the concerns of white men are made more important. And it’s also these same “poor, put-upon abandoned” white men that put their “right” to have sex ahead of women’s right to not be made pregnant when they don’t want to go through it, or suffer other harm and injuries as a result of satisfying men’s sexual “needs.”

Many of these same white working class men consume women’s bodies as disposable sex commodities through porn use and the patronizing of strip joints. And these same working class men defend their “right” to use their pursuit of an orgasm to dictate women’s oppression by white-washing the sex trade in terms of “choice” and “female empowerment.”

Working class white men have an ongoing miserable track record of dominating women and minorities and they feel entitled to keep doing it. This “abandoned” voting bloc throwing mantrums any time oppressed people’s rights are given attention were not abandoned by the Left. They brought a lot of it on themselves. They shove the valid claims, rights and needs of women to the end of the line and act like the only people deserving of anything are men — white men. And they don’t care if their comfort comes at the expense of women and minorities (as always).

To demand that women cede our long overdue valid claims for social justice which remain unaddressed and telling us to shut up about our rights and needs in order to avoid being “divisive” to assuage the egos of those who use their male privilege to dominate us and keep us disempowered under the deceptive guise of class justice is beyond selfish and narcissistic. It is the motherlode of injustice at best, and at worst it is a license to perpetuate oppression with the intent of ensuring that men remain at the top and in charge.

All the ballyhooing about the “abandoned working class white male voter” really amounts to the preservation of unearned white male privilege and white male supremacy. Liberation from “the 1%” and a bigger piece of the pie but only for white dudes while women should just shut up and be grateful if we’re even acknowledged at all. Class justice has become a cover for white working and middle class men’s usurpation of victimhood status at women’s expense, with working class and poor women bearing the brunt.

White working class men have no right to demand that women defer to them in the name of social justice. And class justice activists have no right to expect women’s capitulation to that unreasonable demand, which is precisely what they’re doing when they chastise radical feminists for refusing to comply with the agenda of the Almighty Penis Parade.

Saying that women should just shut up about our issues because addressing our need for justice is “divisive” when we’re fed up with being expected to just take more ongoing misogyny on the chin after centuries of being marginalized — all for the sake of building bridges of solidarity with those who actively participate in depriving us of our rights — is like saying that Jews in Nazi death camps should have sympathized with the working class Nazi guards and put those oppressors’ comfort first because those working class Nazi guards were equally oppressed by “the man” as the Jewish slave labor prisoners slated for extermination. Think that would go over well with Holocaust survivors and their children and grandchildren? Yeah, me neither.

The fact is that we really can’t “just move on” as if centuries of ongoing oppression did not happen while it’s continuing to happen today, despite the malestream media downplaying or denying it. Until reparations and restorative justice is made to women as a class, we really can’t all “just get along.” For class justice activists to expect that from radical feminists is ludicrous, given that women have far fewer rights and opportunities today than we did in 1973. As long as women are subject to laws and policies that are male-centric and forced to live under a hierarchy of ongoing male domination with white males at the top, any talk of class justice is moot.

White working class union men with middle class paychecks and health and dental benefits and retirement plans never wanted women to have anything. They begrudged poor women the same jobs that they felt entitled to while also begrudging us paltry, inadequate welfare checks on “their hard-earned tax dollars” in order to survive. I recall in the 1980′s with the Reagan Revolution aiming its Hotchkiss guns at poor women on welfare who, in many cases, were economically and socially excluded for generations due to sexism on top of classism, and it was white working class union MEN who voted for Reagan TWICE as they drove around in new Ford trucks sporting bumper stickers that read “Rush is right!”

These white working class men — who were/are far better off than poor women of ANY race — blamed “women’s libbers” for women “taking away (white) men’s jobs” while saying that care-taking and motherhood wasn’t real work and was of no importance or value (not enough value to even be worthy of an inadequate welfare subsistence check) because giving men sexual gratification on demand and bearing babies is what women are for and if a woman ended up being a poor single mother it was her own fault. Even though it was MEN who passed the Hyde Amendment and chipped away at poor women’s access to reliable birth control, and even though it was MEN who impregnated all those women and then abandoned them, or forced them to flee with nothing but their kids and the clothes on their backs after abusing them.

White working class men who claim they’ve been abandoned as a constituency need to first take responsibility for deliberately voting for Reagan (twice) and Congressmen like Newt Gingrich, Todd Akin, and all the rest who ran on platforms of opposing Affirmative Action (which never went far enough), eliminating welfare for the very poor (most whom are women), and supporting measures that have basically returned most women to the status of male-owned reproductive chattel. Men need to take responsibility for causing their own economic demise by voting for those who destroyed their unions and off-shored their jobs while assuring them with every dog whistle speech that their “right” to maintain power and domination over women and people of color would be unfettered in the name of “freedom” and “personal responsibility.”

Men need to take responsibility for using their penises like loaded weapons. They need to take responsibility for all the unwanted pregnancies their sexual selfishness caused and the childbirth injuries (including maternal death) to women they inflicted, for all the rapes they commit, for the abortion clinics they bombed, and for the abortion doctors they shot. They need to take responsibility fpr the violence they resorted to in order to force women and minorities out of good-paying union jobs that were — and still are — white male dominated. And they need to take responsibility for all the porn they consume as if it’s their right to objectify and commodify women and children. They need to take responsibility for the domestic terrorism committed by the anti-woman, anti-black, anti-Jewish gun-toting, tax-protesting jerks they supported and sympathized with. They need to take responsibility for the MRA bowel movement which gave us 31 states that grant rapists “fathers’ rights” over the children they sired by rape with visitation and joint custody. And they need to take responsibility for being war hawks and bullies. They need to do their part to dismantle patriarchy and all its systems of unearned privileges. And they need to ditch their sense of entitlement.

It was all these things that men refuse to take responsibility for that caused their alienation and earned contempt from feminists, racial justice activists, and “snobby libruls” whom they blame for problems that they brought on themselves.

Women don’t owe white working class men in the class justice movement a pity party with milk and cookies when men never even apologized for all the shit they did to women, and are still doing to women, to keep women at the bottom of every pile. It only takes a critical number of members of the oppressor group to dismantle the system of oppression they created and that number boils down to about 25% of men. Which goes to show how little men care about women, and how rare and scarce decent and fair-minded men really are.  Sorry, but there are some people that you just can’t build coalitions with because they are not your allies and don’t really care to be, either. Men need to get their own house in order by setting their male chauvinist ‘homies’ straight and working on dismantling the patriarchy they created and maintain before expecting women to be considerate of their delicate feelings in the name of “class solidarity.”

Men who sacrifice the human rights of their own wives, sisters, nieces and daughters on the altar of the phallocracy just to animate their ‘uniform’ of race and sex that they share with rich white sexist men like Mitt Romney don’t need a pity party — they need a good swift kick in the ass for having the moxy to cry “abandonment” after they’ve been sticking it to women, minorities, and the very poor for the better part of the last three decades.

The brutal and horrific oppression of women by men through all of the forced pregnancy/childbirth laws passed in nearly every state, including the federal defunding of Planned Parenthood, was not the work of just a “few bad apples”; it was the coordinated effort of entire state governments — from governors to attorney generals to the majority of state legislatures. The War on Women was launched, and for the most part won by men, because the majority of states have state governments that are full of men like Todd Akin and Rick Santorum. And it was working class white males acting in solidarity with their bourgeois brethren who propelled these selfish, narcissistic and sadistic male supremacist pigs into prosperity and power by voting for them without giving a shit about what it meant for women and how we feel about it.

Depriving women of any social class of the right to an abortion and access to reliable birth control is depriving women of basic human rights over our own bodies. Denying rape victims the right to an abortion is exceptionally cruel because for many women, pregnancy after rape means that the rape isn’t over and will further traumatize them with extreme pain, disfigurement, and debilitated health. It means compounding an already unspeakable trauma. It is cruelty and torture aimed solely at women by men for the sheer damn hell of it. And no, working class white males cannot lay all of this at the feet of the 1% and a few crazy Congressmen. Lawmakers, governors, and attorney generals don’t get into office without votes and campaign volunteers. And all of these anti-woman laws — which have yet to be repealed — are no excuse for working class white men inflicting unwanted pregnancies on their bed victims because their penis feel-good time is somehow more important than having any consideration for women’s human rights.

Tokophobia is the Latest Buzzword in Malespeak

by Jacqueline S. Homan, freelance bioethics writer and author of Classism For Dimwits and Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie

Tokophobia. This is the newest trendy buzzword in male-speak for the day which paints women’s aversion to pregnancy and childbirth as a “disorder” — as if “normal” women should all want to go through it no matter how painful it is and what it does to our psyches and bodies.

Why is it that MEN who have aversion to being in the delivery room with their impregnated bed victims, and who are not keen on parenthood exempted from being labeled with any kind of disorder? This is yet one more disgusting use of male privilege as a cudgel to beat women into patriarchal conformity and submission to men.

I never had kids because I did NOT want to go through pregnancy and childbirth, period. What I saw I did NOT like, and too many women who were conned into the mommy trap have shared in the deepest of secrecy that they regret going through it and hate being mothers but cannot say so in our male supremacist society.

I am NOT “tokophobic.” I just didn’t want all the body policing that goes with childbearing on top of the risks, permanent negative side effects and all the physical consequences of pregnancy that are NOT  “beautiful” in addition to the economic roulette wheel that is part and parcel of the motherhood experience in this patriarchal shithole of a country.

I just don’t/never did want my body torn asunder inside out during the process of gestating and birthing some ungrateful prick’s genetic “legacy” only to possibly end up abandoned, discarded, denied employment (due to lingering childbearing-related health problems like incontinence, obesity, etc.), made to feel like shit over a ruined body (“having a baby is no excuse for letting yourself go”, etc.), and being denied adequate economic support (thanks to Welfare Reform) in this society — never mind reasonable compensation for the pain, suffering, trauma, disfigurement and very real losses in both economic and physical terms that goes with the whole ordeal of childbearing.

Having a baby is just not worth it. Call me selfish, I don’t give a fuck. It’s MY body. Since I’m a poor woman with nothing else in this shit-filled world that I can truly call my own EXCEPT my body, I’ll be damned of ANYONE is going to take even that away from me for some (male-dictated) “moral imperative.” I didn’t want to go through it 20 years ago and today at age 45, I feel the same way, but our paternalistic male-dominated medical constabulary REFUSED to give me a tubal ligation on demand when I was younger while I still had the (albeit limited) earning opportunities and funds to afford the procedure.

My whole life was fraught with anxiety beginning with puberty because of being forced against my will into vulnerability to pregnancy — something I did not ever want to go through. I have never wavered in my position and have no regrets about passing on the miserable, pain-wracked and blood-filled anxiety fest that pregnancy and childbirth really is.

Living under patriarchy where the ONLY way women can get ANY job at all is if we’re sufficiently young enough and physically attractive and thin enough (according to male-defined standards), a body ruined by childbirth is NOT a shallow, vain, or superficial concern — not when women’s economic survival is at stake. Without just compensation for the pain, the trauma, and the disfigurement of childbearing, on top of the very real risk of permanent disability or even death as a result of childbirth, it is NOT worth it for most women to have kids. Men have made it so.

Look at how many affluent men callously discard their ‘brood mares’ for younger, trimmer, thinner women whose bodies haven’t been ruined from pregnancy when childbirth leaves the wife’s body as “damaged goods”, unable to conform to trophy fuck-toy expectations. And what do discarded women get out of the deal? We get denied good jobs, denied child support, denied alimony, denied even enough of subsistence from welfare to live on and told that we’re “leeches who aren’t contributing to society.”

Men are not happy unless they’re making sure that women’s lives are made a living hell. If that were not so, then most men would not be so goddamn selfish as to refuse to wear a “jimmy hat” for women who don’t want to get pregnant.  Or if men were not too damn selfish to get a vasectomy and freeze their sperm instead of presuming that they have a right to deposit their excreta inside women’s bodies as a unilateral contract of “consent” and condition of sex. This is the “consideration” and “respect” for our needs and feelings we women get from men — women whose bodies that men feel entitled to “have” for their use and pleasure and rarely, if ever, ours.

Patriarchal ideologies permeating this society hold that women who give of themselves sexually to men (even under duress and coercion) to satisfy male “needs” are “sluts” that deserve to be raped and deserve to be punished with the torture of forced childbirth through “pro-life” laws and public policies that result in women being denied access to abortion and reliable contraceptives that women can use and control — rather than have to beg and plead and fight with men to wear condoms (without poking holes in them deliberately to impregnate women as a form of abuse, manipulation and control, which many men do).

Women who opt out of having sex with men because of not wanting to be impregnated are derided as “prudes” or castigated for being “lezzies” and “dykes” (what’s wrong with being a lesbian anyway?).

No way in hell should the “responsibility” of motherhood be imposed through the violence of male-supremacist laws on ALL women, whether we want to go through it or not, as punishment for having sex — for meeting men’s sexual “needs” and gratification while our own are rarely, if ever, met — without hazard pay on top of a full salary plus a guaranteed livable pension for the very real work and sacrifice that motherhood is!

Even if adequate compensation DID get enacted for childbearing, maternity is a tour of duty that should NEVER be forced. We don’t force men to join the military and compel them to serve in combat without pay (plus they get all kinds of benefits and extra advantages in the job market after completing their tour of duty, which is a hell of a lot shorter than 18+ years!).

Given the War on Women and how many “good guys” have shown their true colors by defending, excusing, and justifying patriarchy, lesbianism is starting to look like a much more attractive alternative. My “sole purpose” for living is NOT to be some selfish, ungrateful bastard’s brood mare and disposable fetus container, or some “Shallow Hal’s” penis sheath and sperm receptacle, thank you very much!

Call It What It Is — MALE Violence Against Women

by Elaine Charkowski

If you like this article, please post and share it with at least three women and it will go viral!

Breaking the silence by naming an atrocity — and its perpetrators — is the first step toward ending it. Patriarchy is a 6,000 year-old, male-supremacist social system. To maintain it, “Women’s agony at the hands of men must never be revealed. If women steadfastly and courageously began to tell the truth and would not stop, would not be co-opted, would not become afraid, the truth of our enslavement would be undeniable and the jig would be up,” said Sonia Johnson in “Telling the Truth,” which is chapter 10 of her book Going Out of Our Minds-The Metaphysics of Liberation.

MALE violence against women must be named specifically in order to isolate it so it can be eradicated. Women, who outnumber men, are the single largest group of oppressed humans on the planet. Men have oppressed women nonstop for the longest length of time of any oppressed group, roughly 6,000 years (The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler).

A young woman once told me that dealing with male violence “was just part of being a woman!” However, it’s the moral responsibility of the group holding the most power to keep its members from oppressing people in groups holding less power. Thus, ALL men are responsible for stopping male violence against women. Violent men must stop assaulting women. Non-violent men must not sit by and allow male violence against women to continue. To do so is to condone it. Their inaction-or indifference-is passive male violence against women.
Silence is complicity.

Here are nine of the most popular evasions often used to avoid naming MALE violence specifically and to avoid holding ALL men responsible for ending male violence against women:

1. “Not all men are violent.”
No one said they were. Since men collectively hold more power than women, and since all men benefit from living in a sexist, male supremacist society, non-violent men are also responsible for stopping male violence against women. In the same way, whites, who collectively hold more power than people of color (in the U.S.) are responsible for ending racism, even whites who don’t commit racist acts. This is because all whites benefit from living in a racist society that gives whites unearned advantages.

2. “Women are violent too.”
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Mary Daly calls this “universalism.” Muddying the waters, it blurs the specific focus on male violence against women by blending it with violence in general (universal violence) and casting it as a gender-neutral human issue (see examples of universalism in excuse #3 below).

Also, under patriarchy, women are blamed for their own degradation (being violent, collaborating with men against women, etc.) As Mary Daly wrote in her book  Pure Lust, (p.365) “Within the Virulent State of phallocracy, women have been attacked and divided against our Selves. From the earliest times of the patriarchy, countless mothers have been broken and the resulting broken daughters have carried on the chain of fragmentation. . . .

“They have been reduced to responding to the fettered/fathered urge to reproduce their altered–(that is, patriarchally identified selves)– in an endless circle of Self destruction. Such forcibly altered women have appeared to be normal within the man made milieu.”

Although it exists, female violence pales in comparison to male violence. Men commit 88 percent of violent crime (US Bureau of Justice statistics). Women don’t build rape camps to torture and molest men to death. Women don’t control the U.S. government which spends more than half a trillion dollars a year on mass murder (war). Globally, women can’t walk alone without the possibility of men assaulting them. The reverse is not true. Even though some broken token women may collaborate with patriarchal men to gain power (Condi Rice, Margaret Thatcher etc.) it doesn’t change the fact that patriarchal men are in charge and allow selected token “honorary men” into the boys club–if they identify with, and behave like, patriarchal men.

3. “Since violence is a human problem committed by both sexes, and since women also commit violence against women, MALE violence against women doesn’t have to be isolated and named specifically.”

Here are some examples of universalism (“women are violent too” etc.) The power disparity between women and men is the reason for some women’s dysfunctional behavior. It is not an excuse for it:

• “Some lesbians also better their partners”
This results from internalized dysfunctional heterosexual behavior absorbed from a patriarchal society in which the dominating partner (the man) batters the woman. Male violence against women is the blueprint for lesbian vs lesbian battering.

•“Some women also commit racist violence against women”
Racism (male violence based on race) was created and implemented by dysfunctional men to “divide and conquer.” Male violence based on the “otherness” of the oppressed is the blueprint for racist attacks inflicted by some women upon “other” women. This results when women internalize racism and identify with the dominating race (including men)-instead of bonding with oppressed women. Racism is only possible when inflicted by the race possessing the most political and economic power (racism=prejudice+power over). Thus, women of dominated races cannot commit racism against women of the dominating race-only prejudice. Male violence against women of the same race is clearly seen as sexism. However, male violence against women of different races is often obscured by being seen as just racism instead of racism and sexism.

•“Some women also exploit women sexually and economically.”
Hatred and contempt of women-including themselves-is the underlying issue. Women who exploit other women identify with and see themselves through the eyes of the oppressor (male supremacists who have contempt for women).

4. The absent referent.
The “absent referent” refers to something without naming it. Mary Daly in her book “Quintessence” wrote, “Naming the agent is required for an adequate analysis of atrocities.” As linguist Julia Penelope has shown in her book, “Speaking Freely: Unlearning the Lies of the Fathers’ Tongues,” “agent deletion is a dangerous and common mind-muddying flaw.” Agent deletion is common, concerning male violence against women. Timid terms such as “sexual violence,” “domestic violence” “gender-based violence,” and “violence” refer to men without naming them, even when describing instances when it was obviously men who raped hundreds of thousands of women in Bosnia, Darfur, Rwanda and many other nations. Even Amnesty International, which calls it “a global scourge,” uses the term “violence against women” and “sexual violence” instead of “male violence against women.”

5. “Men also rape men and boys.”
Rape is a male hate crime against women. However, the use of universalism (see #3) attempts to portray rape as a gender-neutral atrocity. The fact that men also rape men and boys doesn’t change the fact that in every nation on earth, in all levels of society, men rape women. Even when men rape males, contempt for women is the underlying issue. Men rape males to degrade them by treating them like raped women.

If white supremacist men batter or murder a black man, it’s clearly seen as a racist hate crime, even though white man also batter white men. In the same manner, rape is a hate crime against women, even though men also rape men.

6. “What we resist persists.”
Supposedly, opposing something directly “gives it more power.” If racism and sexism were not opposed directly in the U.S., black people would still be enslaved. Women would still be men’s property, unable to vote, own a business or keep their own wages. If the Nazis were not opposed directly, they would now run the world.
Opposing women’s oppression directly is only one tactic. Another is being proactive by supporting women in their efforts to gain universal human rights. This can be done by volunteering at women’s shelters, donating to groups that help women in impoverished nations and many other ways. Both tactics are necessary.

7. The “passive voice.”
In English grammar, using the passive voice (women were raped by men) instead of the active voice (men raped the women) shifts the focus from the perpetrators and their actions (men doing the raping) to their victims (the women being raped).

8. “Boys will be boys.”
Patriarchal cultures promote “nature over nurture” (biological determinism) and claim men are “naturally violent.” This legitimizes and perpetuates war and men’s abuse of women. Abnormal violent “manhood” is regarded as the norm. However, men are naturally peaceful. Archaeological evidence shows men enjoyed and maintained 1,500 years of peace in ancient Crete! It’s proven today by famous non-violent men such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and many other men who organize against warfare and who speak out against male violence against women. It takes years of traumatic conditioning (while being immersed in a violent society) to make men violent. “Military training camps, police academies and even some self-defense pros are constantly searching for more effective methods of suppressing the human revulsion to taking human life.” – See “The Science of Creating Killers”
If men were “naturally violent,” years of brutal conditioning by violent media and in boot camps would not be needed.

9. “Societies were always patriarchal and men have always dominated women.”
Thousands of years of women’s history has been nearly erased by patriarchal men. Marija Gimbutas, the world renowned archaeologist who wrote Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe unearthed many relics from around the world that proves men didn’t always dominate women and that women and men once shared power in peaceful non-patriarchal Goddess worshipping. societies. Riane Eisler’s book The Chalice and the Blade cites many more instances proving this.

“Democracy does not yet exist anywhere”

Robin Morgan wrote The Demon Lover which is a study of the link between terrorism in the home (“domestic violence” or more accurately, MALE violence against women in the home) and global terrorism. Terrorism, (MALE violence against women) both in the home and in ALL the societies of the world, supports patriarchy and is a necessary component.

Morgan said, “The majority of the population in virtually all nation states is female and is forced by patriarchy to obey, be silent, and acquiesce-which means that ‘democracy’ does not yet exist anywhere.”

The necessary foundation for the creation of democracy is universal human rights for women. This cannot be achieved unless global MALE violence against women is eradicated. The question is how can we accomplish this? Men have had more than 6,000 to stop their endless war against women, and they haven’t stopped. So it falls to women to accomplish this.

From The Ship that sailed into the Living Room by Sonia Johnson:

“My formative years were spent during men’s so-called Second World War. From that war and from reading since, I learned some of the tactics that had had to be invented to prevent the escape of prisoners.

Generally, when a group of men was captured, as soon as possible the captors got them into some sort of holding corral—some cordoned-off space—and set guards to watch them.

“Among the prisoners, leaders would soon arise, those men who might, for instance, urge others around them not to cooperate with the enemy until they were all given water. In some way, those who were less afraid, surer of themselves, and therefore most likely to organize rebellions or escapes, soon identified themselves.

“Their captors discovered through trial and error that to prevent trouble they had either to execute these leaders immediately or to put them in solitary confinement—one man to one cell with his own private guard. The analogy is obvious.

“When men dreamed of controlling women and hence the world, every woman was just such a leader—one of those who would disrupt and defeat the hell-plans. So during the war men have fought against us for thousands of years, they have had either to kill us or to put us in solitary confinement—one woman to one guard in one cell . . . .”

There has been only ONE war fought literally worldwide, affecting every living thing, and that has been men’s all-out, non-stop, millennia-long war against women, a war that not only continues to this moment without the slightest abatement but intensifies hourly.

UPDATE: All is Not Well In Viagraland

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

Well, since my previous post concerning the problems of rampant misogyny and sexism in the atheist/skeptics community, which has really become more of a haven for MRA’s/PUA’s and their misogynist male chauvinist fellow travelers, I received only one follow-up email from JREF’s Communications Director, Carrie Poppy the same day as the original post went up.

Thank you for your questions, Jacqueline.

Could you provide your deadline and outlet? Thanks so much.

Best,

Carrie Poppy

Director of Communications, James Randi Educational Foundation

www.randi.org

            (213) 293-3092       ext. 2  |              (703) 226-3785       fax

From: Jacqueline Homan <jacquelinehoman7@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 10:05 PM
Subject: These are my specific questions
To: djgrothe@randi.org
Cc: Carrie@randi.org

To which I immediately responded:

My deadline is three business days. And as to “outlet”, I believe I made it perfectly clear to DJ Grothe that I am unembedded, therefore you may submit your responses to me in the same fashion in which I asked the questions: by email.

As of midnight, June 26 2012, I have not received ANY further response. To the best of my knowledge, neither have the others who have also been inquiring.

This is not an accident or an ‘unfortunate miscommunication.’ There is something to be said when valid questions go ignored about women being threatened, harassed, and retaliated against for complaining that atheist/skeptics conferences more closely resemble Nerd Boys Gone Wild with “enlightened” men exhibiting frat boy mentalities. The Vatican and the Christian Right are not the only patriarchal powerhouses with a vested interest in perpetuating misogyny, male privilege, sexism, and discrimination against women and girls. The “freethought” community needs to own up to that and stop blaming misogyny on religion when religion has merely been one of the vehicles that legitimized it.

The dead giveaway was the conspicuous absence of all these “reasonable” men in the fight against the War on Women. Not a single loud-mouthed atheist/skeptic pontificating know-it-all gasbag male from this colossal fart convention could be found among most states’ Unite Against the War on Women rallies on 4-28 counter-protesting the misogynistic fetal idolators of popery that want everyone to forget about women’s right to life and bodily autonomy.

Sikivu Hutchinson, an African-American feminist and atheist said something to that effect at the Women in Secularism conference at the Center for Inquiry last month: where has the secular community been for poor women in the battle for reproductive rights? 

How is the fight for birth control and abortion NOT a “science interest” being threatened by patriarchal religious powerhouses when it is medical ethics and specific medical technology that is under siege precisely because it is something that saves women’s lives?

The overwhelmingly white upper-middle class ‘good ol’ boys club’ dominating the atheist/skeptic community has been trying to pressure biology professor PZ Myers to “shut Sikivu up” and chastised him for giving her a platform so her voice can be heard, so that the “freethought” community is not one more bastion of male privilege.  Many of these same “usual suspects” in the “freethought” community have also sent Taslima Nasrin vicious, threatening emails, because they’re trying to silence her, too.

If all that money that Rebecca Watson and the rest of the Skepchicks raised that ended up going into JREF’s coffers (rich white dudes’ pockets) for sending women to TAM conferences had instead gone to Planned Parenthood or the National Abortion Network Funds — that would have done far more to empower women and girls than sending women to these atheist/skeptics conferences when all that material can be found online for free anyway. Why should women further enrich these over-privileged alpha dipshits who never gave a fuck about us and who don’t want women to be liberated or even have basic human rights?

If we are going to educate women and girls on breaking the shackles of misogyny and freeing womanity from the cruel yoke of patriarchy, let’s do it right: Let’s examine suppressed history, and the wealth of knowledge unearthed by archaeologists and anthropologists that was buried under tons of patriarchal debris and demand restorative justice for women. Let us eschew ANY “enlightenment movement” , “educational foundation”, or “social justice” movement that relegates women to the margins as the  inconsequential “Other” except to provide (often unwillingly and without just compensation) expected free grata gestational “duty”  — no matter the harm and cost to us. Let us stop rewarding promoters of the rape culture.

Advancement and progress for only half of the human race but not the other is no advancement or progress at all.

All is Not Well in Viagraland: Misogyny, Sexism and Sexual Harassment in the Atheist Community

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

I wandered over to the Freethought Blog forum when a “little birdie” told me that I needed to do some feministing in support of my fellow atheist/skeptic “sisters” who were being blamed for TAM registration declines and who were accused by MRA/PUA drama queens of launching a “witch hunt” — to which I posted a scolding response on Jason Thibeault’s blog which he put up as a stand-alone blog piece. TAM is an annual conference that costs several hundred dollars per ticket and is connected with the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). Apparently, atheism and skepticism is dominated by Big Money (read: patriarchy) — like religion.

Of course, it was over the next 48 hours after my scathing post on Jason’s Freethought blog that the Great Penis Debate (posted by Stephanie Zvan on her Almost Diamonds blog) was broadcast live via Google podcast where these guys showed their asses for the whole world to see them as they really are: vile, rape apologist, mansplaining, misogynistic alpha dipshits and they just kept digging their own holes deeper on the FtB posts thereafter.

And I thought the Vatican had problems washing its dirty underwear in public, but these guys (Emery Emery, Wendell Henry, BJ Kramer, Travis Roy, and Mallorie Nasrallah and Sara Mayhew) in the Great Penis Debate really take the cake. I am really glad that Jason Thibeault, who blogs under the name Lousy Canuck on Freethought, constructed the sexual harassment timeline of the events, which seems to keep building as more and more outrageous faux pas are committed — by the very same men (and a couple of their Stepford groupies) claiming the “superior” position of being “rational.”

From what I have seen, the only thing they’re superior at is alienating a sizable chunk of the atheist/skeptics movement at the most inopportune time when the godless community had the greatest chance of a victory against religious tyranny, given the fight women are waging in the trenches in defense against of the stripping of our human rights with the War on Women launched by the Teahadists, the Christian Right, the Vatican and the USCCB. Could these actors in the atheist/skeptics movement be agent provocateurs trying to help the Religious Wrong out by wrecking the freedom from religion movement? (Seriously. Nobody could fuck things up this bad!)

So after yet another woman has been targeted for threats and harassing emails (Ophelia Benson) and decided to bow out of TAM, I decided to put my unembedded/freelance investigative journalism hat on and call DJ Grothe myself to ask him point blank what the hell is going on with him, JREF, TAM and these accusations against the women that had been JREF’s and TAM’s biggest cheerleaders (until the shit hit the fan with this fiasco). I got his answering machine and within 10 minutes he called me from his cell phone and promised to call me back when he returned to his office within 15 minutes. He never called me back. Instead, I got this email on Facebook from Carrie Poppy:

Hi Jacqueline,

My name is Carrie and I am the Communications Director for the JREF. I understand you called our president to request an interview today. I apologize that you didn’t hear back from us sooner. Unfortunately, DJ has been tied up with urgent TAM meetings and preparations, and isn’t able to call you back today. If you have any specific questions, would you email them to us? I will make sure you get a response quickly. My email address isCarrie@randi.org, and DJ’s is djgrothe@randi.org.

Thanks so much, Jacqueline, and sorry again for the delayed response.

Best,
Carrie

So here are those tough “specific” questions I planned on asking DJ on the phone:

1. Women are saying they’ve suffered retaliation for speaking out about sexual harassment and/or for making harassment reports to TAM staff. Is this true?
   
2. Did you accuse feminists of trying to destroy JREF and/or TAM because they spoke out about harassment and retaliation and a “sweep it under the rug” approach to the handling of harassment complaints? (i.e. the accusations of ‘witch hunts’ and demanding criminal evidence as in the case of “Dr. Buzzo” (aka Monopod Man, who was stalking female TAM attendees and taking up-skirt photos and who was/is well-known by TAM staff as a harasser of women because he has been doing this for several years in a row at TAM conferences)
   
3. Why would Emery Emery of the Ardent Atheist show claim that Rebecca Watson is trying to destroy TAM after she had been a solid endorser and supporter of JREF and TAM and is that YOUR position as well?
   
4. What is your position on the copy of a threat/harassing email received by Ophelia Benson, the scheduled TAM 2012 speaker who has now decided to bow out, which she says she sent you on June 19^th 2012 and will you answer her email to you about it?
   
5. Why did you blame your falling numbers of women TAM registrants on the very same women (Skepchicks’ Rebecca Watson in particular) who praised TAM while raising funds for more women attend TAM?
   
6. Did you or anyone else in JREF give Emery Emery the authority to speak for you and for JREF?TAM regarding what he said during the Great Penis Debate podcast?
   
7. Did you make accusatory complaints/comments/statements — including press releases — saying that women who complain about harassment are making women afraid to come to TAM conferences?
   
8. Why did you deny that a specific harassment incident occurred involving a conference attendee (Ashley Miller) after you, according to several witnesses, removed the offending jerk yourself?
   

I will share the answers I get, if any at all, with my readership here, on Facebook and with the rest of Freethought Blog forum’s readership because I think the public deserves to know the truth, not just a polite kiss-off answer but the truth. I can already guess what the response will be — if I get any response at all.

Eyes Closed, No Peeking

By Tracy Lynne Stout Meisky

“Dedicated to the governor of Pennsylvania, who suggested that women upset at being forced to have an unnecessary internal ultrasound should ‘close their eyes’, and to the Georgia legislator who wants to outlaw abortion even for a woman carrying a dead fetus because ‘cows and pigs do it all the time’ , and to the gentleman in Wisconsin who wants to outlaw divorce and says that women who are abused by their husbands should just ‘remember the good times’, and… and…. and….

“Just close your eyes” he said.

Close your eyes and maybe it won’t hurt so much. Maybe you can make the shame go away if you don’t have to look at it, don’t have to meet the eyes of the doctor who is ready to violate you, who is no longer allowed to address your pain and need.

Close your eyes and deal with it because from this point on, health care for you is nothing more than a power play, the political blood sport of men, drenched in your own desperate blood.

Close your eyes, ladies, and think of Jesus who wants you to know that you are a sinner- and a slut for having dreams beyond the ones given to you by your pastor, your employer, and your governor.

See, they are worried that you might get an abortion mistakenly thinking it’s a treatment for the flu or something, eager to brand you a wanton for having sex at all, a Jezebel for enjoying pleasure without consequence…the way that they get to.

Close your eyes and pretend that you are still a person with the right to make your own, most intimate decisions about your future.

Close your eyes and remember when planning your own family wasn’t considered dirty, when owning your body was still your birthright and the right to give birth also included the right not to.

Close your eyes and forget that you are supposed to be a mindless object of desire, to be salivated over and then dismissed, used by men to sell beer and shoes and laundry detergent, expected to exist only for their sexual pleasure, reviled for feeling it yourself, condemned for being what they so determinedly make you: a sexual being.

So come here, little girl, here’s a push-up bra, stilettos and a chastity belt. Learn now that sex is something for a man to do to a woman, not actually with her.

Understand that you must grow up to be either a slut, a dyke or a mother…and a mother, and a mother.

Close your eyes, girls, and enjoy your patent leather Mary Janes and princess dreams that don’t yet end in blood and probes and congressmen playing doctor behind the statehouse, insisting that the princess carry even death in her womb, all in the name of life.

Close your eyes and think of your grandmothers, and of their grandmothers owned by their fathers, traded to their husbands, needing permission to go to college.

Think of the days when the few lady-like jobs that existed were only for those un-natural old maids unable to join the ranks of the real women doing a woman’s real job of having babies.

Think of not even being allowed to learn or to help support yourself and your family, of depending on a man to feed and clothe you and your children, your own love and need to protect them a chain and an anchor that keeps you in the harbor of even a loveless, abusive marriage, your yards and yards of beautiful sail forever stowed belowdecks, because the open seas of life is no place for a woman.

Close your eyes, ladies, and think of England; and of Iran and Afghanistan where women are chained for their own good, beaten for showing their faces, stoned for going to school, sewn shut between babies, robbed of the ability to feel passion, used for a man’s desire but allowed none of their own; receptacles, incubators, cooks and maids.

So close your eyes, and shut your mouths, and be thankful that you live in such an enlightened, modern land.”

Brava Tracy! I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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.

Having a Vagina and Uterus is Not a Lifestyle Choice

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

In the past 35 years’ onslaught on women’s basic human right to bodily autonomy (i.e. specifically to reproductive choice) under the “pro-life” banner, the anti-woman/pro-forced birth movement — 77% whom are male, 100% whom will never be pregnant — has never promoted any laws to protect women from unwanted pregnancies in the first place, thus eliminating about 90% of all early term abortions, which comprise 88% of all abortions according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute. As an aside, most early term abortions are due to birth control failure. The risk of death from pregnancy complications increases exponentially for women over age 35, and the time a woman spends vulnerable to pregnancy spans from menarche to menopause — about 40 years of her life.

The hazards, rigors, risks, side effects, pain and trauma of childbearing are rarely talked about in these abortion “debates.” Neither is the vulnerability of destitute and homeless pregnant women and the extra hazards that pregnancy imposes on them in their already precarious situation. The “pro-life” faction has never valued or protected the lives of vulnerable women, and for the most part, the majority of men never cared about women. Viagra is doled out like water at a marathon and is covered by almost all insurance plans, including Medicaid, to ensure that every selfish jerk who refuses to wear a condom can get it up but what about all the poor women that get pregnant as a result? Who takes care of them?

Reproductive abuse against women far out-ranks the number of women who get pregnant to “trap a man.” A study published by Dr. Elizabeth Miller in the September/October 2007 issue of Ambulatory Pediatrics confirms this — 25% of the young women surveyed reported incidents of abusive partners who tried to force them to get pregnant against their will by sabotaging their birth control and manipulating condom use.

The same mentality that thinks it’s perfectly OK to treat women as disposable reproductive chattel who should be forced to get/remain pregnant against our will with no concern for what permanent physical and psychological damage that such a traumatic thing poses for us — never mind care about how the reproductive “livestock” feels about it — is the same mentality that rationalizes that it’s OK “rent” a woman’s vagina for an hour and do whatever they want to that woman’s body since they “paid for it.”

Men as a class have all the money (because men get the lion’s share of all the good-paying jobs), sexual entitlements and political voice, and that gives them power as a class over women’s sexuality and reproduction. That power is tied to violence and force. When sugar-coating fails, violence in the form of misogynistic male-centric laws eliminating access to birth control and abortion clinic violence follows — it’s carrot-and-stick dominance. Men get to say who they fuck, when, and under what terms and conditions irrespective of how the woman feels about it or what it might do to her as a result (frequently couched in terms of “consequences” that only women “deserve”). Freedom and social justice for only half the citizenry is not freedom and social justice at all.

When men watch medical education videos of pregnancy complications and videos of live natural childbirths and they see the tremendous pain and trauma that women suffer trying to give birth, nearly ALL of them say “thank god I have a penis.” But what you will never hear any of them say is: “I don’t want my sister/niece/wife/girlfriend/daughter to be forced to go through that against her will just because she had sex.”

Newsflash: Having a uterus, ovaries, and a vagina is not a “lifestyle choice.”

Misogyny and the oppression of women as a class does not occur in a vacuum. The oppression of women happens because of consent through silence and indifference by those who have the most unearned privileges and who get to dictate all the rules, policies, customs, norms, and traditions in this society. The onus for dismantling oppression created in this system of unearned privileges rests on those who have privilege.

Since birth rates have jumped as a result of limited access to reliable contraception and abortion through “conscience clause” laws and “fetal personhood” laws enacted in many states, our maternal death and disability rates surpass those in some Third World countries — serving as grim reminders that women are the last to be taken care of in this society. People utterly disregard the pregnant woman as if anything she suffers as a result of being forced to give birth doesn’t matter, usually articulated as “you should have kept your legs shut” and “just have the baby and put it up for adoption” when it’s pregnancy and childbirth that are exactly what a woman seeking birth control and/or having an abortion wants to avoid — for very good reasons!

Since the passage of Roe v. Wade up until the recent Planned Parenthood clinic closings, 40 million women safely terminated unwanted pregnancies. During that same period, 21 million women died from pregnancy complications or during/shortly after giving birth. 400 million women have sustained debilitating permanent health problems, side effects, disabling childbirth injuries, and disfigurement which utterly destroyed their lives. A woman dies in childbirth every 90 seconds, according to WHO and Amnesty International. This is what male privilege costs women. Getting stuck in traffic is an inconvenience; being forced by law and public policy to go through pregnancy and childbirth against your will and having to suffer all the inherent risks and side effects is more than just a mere “inconvenience.”

According to obstetric specialist and colorectal surgeon Dr. Michele Thornton,  about 40% of all Western women who have given birth sustain pelvic floor damage, leaving them with permanent fecal and urinary incontinence — undermining their confidence, wrecking their sex lives (which destroys marriages), and eliminating their ability to function in any job. Dr. Thornton also states that the problem is underreported because many women are too ashamed and embarrassed to tell their spouses and partners, let alone tell their doctors. Even when the surgical repair of fistulas caused by obstructed labors, episiotomies and tears is successful, the permanent physical limitations and compromised organ tissue’s integrity remain permanent, costing women everything from being able to participate in society to being able to have a normal sex life to being able to keep their jobs or get hired at new ones. Maureen Treadwell at the Birth Trauma Association confirms this devastation and frequent occurrence of this “silent epidemic.” The trauma from the emotional and physical fallout left many women unable to contemplate another baby.

As to the argument that pregnancy and childbirth — particularly childbirth without pain relief — are “natural” to the female condition and that biology is destiny, there’s nothing logical about equating “natural” to “safe” and fate. The natural course for appendicitis without medical remedy is 30% chance of death from peritonitis. Who in their right mind would deny a person remedy for that natural infliction on the human condition?

And if it’s “only natural” to force women to endure pregnancy and childbirth against our will when we don’t want to or can’t handle it for whatever reason, then why the need for unnatural man-made laws to forcibly deprive women of access to contraception and abortion? If this was all so natural with everyone “in their place”, women would only have sex when pregnancy was the goal.

Many women’s bodies don’t handle pregnancy well.  Not all women  suffer the worst results of pregnancy and childbirth, but there’s no way to accurately predict which women will and which won’t — it’s a real crap shoot even under the best of terms and conditions.  Here is a short partial list of the permanent and often irreversible changes to a woman’s body caused by pregnancy and birth which really makes the shot-gun wedding or the 18 years of monthly child support checks (if she gets it), and inadequate, meager temporary welfare benefits look like a cheap kiss-off:

Normal or expectable side effects of pregnancy:

• exhaustion

• gestational diabetes – can remain permanent as Type II diabetes

• altered appetite

• nausea and vomiting

• heartburn and indigestion

• constipation

• weight gain

• hypothyroidism

• dizziness and light-headedness

• bloating, swelling, fluid retention

• hemorrhoids
• hematoma (usually on the vulva but can be on the inside of the vagina)

• abdominal cramps

• yeast infections

• congested/bloody nose

• acne and skin disorders

• skin discoloration

• mild to severe backache and strain

• increased headaches

• difficulty/discomfort with sleeping

• increased urination/incontinence

• gum disease (leading to premature tooth loss)

• pica

• breast pain and discharge

• swelling of joints, leg cramps, joint pain

• difficulty sitting/standing in later pregnancy

• inability to take regular medications

• shortness of breath

• higher blood pressure

• hair loss (this is a permanent side effect)

• anemia

• inability to participate in some sports and activities

• high susceptibility to infection (pregnant women have a much lower immunity to illness, infection and disease than non-pregnant women or men because the pregnant woman’s immune system has to literally shut down so her system’s antibodies don’t attack the implanted fertilized ovum)

• extreme pain during labor and delivery (which can last for several hours to several days)

• hormonal mood changes, including post-partum depression

• post-partum psychosis/birth related PTSD (caused by a birth that was traumatic for the woman)

• extended post-partum recovery period and exhaustion (a difficult vaginal birth or a C-section can take a year or more to fully recover)

Normal, expectable, and frequent permanent side effects of pregnancy and birth:

• stretch marks

• loose skin

• permanent weight gain or redistribution

• permanent change to pelvic skeletal and ligament structure — it is not uncommon for a woman’s hips to be 4” wider than normal for the passage of the fetus during birth as her pelvic bone opens and ligaments stretch, and often this change is permanent, leaving many women unable to EVER get back into their pre-pregnancy clothes even if they lose ALL their pregnancy weight (leaving poor women who are unable to afford to go out and buy all new clothes with absolutely nothing to wear except a couple pairs of oversized sweatpants and maybe one or two donated used maternity outfits)

• abdominal and vaginal muscle weakness that Kegels won’t necessarily prevent or fix

• pelvic floor disorder (causing urinary and fecal incontinence and severely diminished quality of life, try re-entering the workforce with a problem like that!)

• difficulty resuming employment due to lifting restrictions imposed by permanent pelvic floor damage from pregnancy stress and/or childbirth injuries.

• changes to breasts (saggy and “deflated”)

• varicose veins

• disfigurement/scarring from episiotomy or C-section

• other permanent aesthetic changes to the body (which can be devastating to a woman’s life chances for everything from finding a marriage partner to getting a good job in a culture that emphasizes women’s value on youth, thinness and beauty)

• hemorrhoids

• loss of dental or bone calcium (tooth decay/loss and osteoporosis)

Occasional complications and side effects:

• domestic violence (pregnant women are more at risk for being murdered by boyfriends and husbands than non-pregnant women)

• hyperemesis gravidarum (kidney failure, requiring surgery and kidney stent)

• obstructed labor (caused by fetal malpresentation, large babies, fetal shoulder dystochia resulting in internal pelvic organ tissues to necrotize)

• permanent injury to back (late pregnancy and delivery)

• severe lacerations, tissue scarring requiring surgery (especially after additional pregnancies)

• prolapsed uterus/vagina (risk increases tremendously after additional pregnancies and pelvic floor weaknesses)

• pre-eclampsia (the most common pregnancy complication — edema and hypertension associated with 10% of all pregnancies, mostly among older pregnant women; a precursor to eclampsia, which is fatal)

• eclampsia (convulsions, seizures, coma during pregnancy or labor, fatal unless pregnancy is aborted)

• gestational diabetes which often remains permanent in the form of Adult Type II diabetes – resulting in permanent debilitating health condition requiring medication, often leading to blindness and limb amputations (aggravated by lack of ability to afford healthy food low in starches and sugars)

• placenta previa (causes laboring women to bleed to death during delivery)

• thrombocytopenic purpura (causing women to bleed to death during/immediately after birth)

• severe cramping

• embolism (blood clots, air bubbles, amniotic fluid bubbles escaping into circulatory system causing stroke or massive heart attack; usually fatal)

• medical disability requiring total bed rest

• diastasis recti (abdominal muscle separation/tears)

• mitral valve stenosis (causes heart failure, stroke, and pulmonary edema)

• lack of resistance to highly infectious diseases

• hormonal imbalance (causes weight problems, depression, and breast and reproductive organ cancer)

• ectopic pregnancy (fatal unless medically aborted)

• broken bones (rib cage and lower spine from fetal pressure in late pregnancy and during delivery)

• hemorrhage

• refractory gastroesophegal reflux disease

• aggravation of pre-pregnancy conditions/diseases (epilepsy, diabetes, heart condition, high blood pressure, etc)

• permanently ruined sex life from injury to the nerves and tissues of the sexual organs (caused by 3^rd and 4^th degree vaginal tears, episiotomies, etc. during delivery often accompanied by permanent fecal and/or urinary incontinence)

• elevated risks for certain cancers

Serious complications causing permanent problems associated with pregnancy, labor and delivery:

• peripartum cardiomyopathy (weakened heart)

• cardiopulmonary arrest (fatal: irreversible brain damage and death occurs within 4 minutes)

• magnesium toxicity

• severe hypoxemia/acidosis

• massive embolism

• increased inter-cranial pressure, brainstem infarction (An Alzheimer-like forgetfulness from brain matter shrinkage called “mommy brains”)

• molar pregnancy/ gestational trophoblastic disease (a mass of abnormal/malignant tissue growth from the placenta)

• malignant arrhythmia ( coronary artery spasms)

• circulatory collapse

• obstetric fistula – (tear/hole due to tissue damage from pressure to the area separating the vagina from the rectum or the vagina from the bladder; causing urine and/or feces to pass through the vagina uncontrollably. Fistulas require surgery and are not always able to be repaired even after several subsequent surgeries)

• colostomy – caused by an irreparable obstetric fistula

More permanent side effects:

• future infertility

• autoimmune disease – caused by lingering Y-chromosomes from carrying a male fetus

• ovarian cancer – caused by elevated estrogen levels due to pregnancy

• breast cancer

• permanent disability

• death

If pregnancy was a drug, the FDA would have banned it decades ago. Instead of enacting any measures that enable women and girls to defend themselves from unwanted pregnancies, every “pro-life” measure is backdoor sexual prohibition against women — from the Hyde Amendment to the “fetal personhood” laws and “conscience clause” laws to discriminatory clinic zoning regulations and unaffordable (and invasive) mandatory vaginal ultrasounds — restricting or eliminating access to birth control and abortion, deliberately targets women to punish them with pain, physical and economic encumbrance, trauma, debilitating health problems, risk of disability or death, and disfigurement for the “crime” of having sex.

The “pro-life” bloc refuses to admit this. They trivialize the harm to women and even justify it in terms that preserve unearned male privilege at the expense of women’s human rights by claiming that it’s “all about the baby” and that we should “punish rapists, not the unborn” — as if this somehow makes it perfectly OK to subject women to torture, cruelty, disfigurement, enslavement, permanent bodily damage and possible death against their will without any regard for how the reproductive “livestock” feels about it, or if we survive the ordeal. The only ones “pro-lifers” are interested in punishing are not rapists, but those whose bodies incur 100% of the risks and side effects of pregnancy and birth: women.

Griswold v. Connecticut (passed in 1965) framed the right to access contraception as a “marital privacy” right. Roe v. Wade (passed in 1973) quite specifically made the balance between a woman’s human rights to life and bodily autonomy and the fetus very reasonable and fair. But the predominantly white male rapists’ rights political bowel movement persisted under the “morality” banner and succeeded in chipping away at Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. Connecticut over the last 35 years to the point where a woman’s basic human right to have control over her own body exists in name only.

The pro-forced gestational enslavement movement never cared about “the unborn” except to use a fetus to shame and injure its “slutty” mother; otherwise an artificial stand-alone uterus would have been invented by now to facilitate the transplantation of a blastocyst/zygote from an unwilling female host with minimal risk to her, creating a win-win situation. But fascists rarely compromise.

Abstinence-only until marriage has been a major epic fail.  A marriage license is not contraception and doesn’t prevent any pregnancy that a woman cannot handle/does not want to carry, and abstinence in a marriage is not conducive to nurturing and preserving marriages and families in a nation that already has a 50% divorce rate. Adoption is not the solution to unwanted pregnancy; it’s the solution for those who don’t want to parent the child after it’s born. When a woman does not want to be pregnant, the drive to become un-pregnant is as strong, if not stronger, than the natural forces that want her to stay pregnant. And then she will seek an abortion and do anything to get one, whether it is safe and legal or not. That is fact.

Those cloaking their misogyny in the habiliments of “morality” say that sex is for procreation only, and should only be engaged in when childbearing is the plan. But that flies in the face of reality. Humans, unlike many other mammals, do not have seasons for going into heat. We can reproduce at any time of the year. As a highly social species, we have sex for purely pleasurable reasons and emotional pair-bonding most of the time without wanting to have a pregnancy result with each encounter. There is nothing “sinful” or “slutty” about that. That is reality.

As a bipedal species with large brains, pregnancy and childbirth is exceptionally hazardous for women. When you see a mother, you’re looking at someone who suffered through a physically grueling experience with permanent battle scars that aren’t a pretty Norman Rockwell picture. Pregnancy is not a benign health condition — a cold hard fact that has been sanitized and romanticized with too much quackery. Not too long ago, pregnancy and childbirth killed about one fifth of American women.

A ruined body is the least of the hazards, although aesthetics should not be downplayed in a society where a woman’s life chances for everything from job opportunities to finding a life mate to gaining/keeping social acceptance hinges on being thin and “attractive looking” enough — whether we like to admit it or not. And not all women are able to “snap back” after childbirth, even if they did “all the right things” during pregnancy and after giving birth. Often, pregnancy fat never goes completely away. This is non-trivial considering the devastating emotional effects of poor body image suffered by women and girls as a direct result of the pornification of advertizing in which an unrealistic standard of beauty is upheld as “normal” and males drive this by making cruel and cutting comments about women’s bodies that fail to meet this unreasonable criteria.

In addition to these personal expectations, husbands, family members, friends, and media images add to the pressure, warning that having a baby is no excuse for “letting yourself go.” Yet few women are able to regain their pre- pregnancy figures. Childbearing and the passage of time change bodies in irrevocable ways. According to the Department of Health & Human Services, eating disorders among pregnant women has reached epidemic proportions. Incidences of bulimia have tripled since the 1980s and anorexia incidences have also risen, according to studies collected by the National Eating Disorders Association.

Forced childbirth is tantamount to FGM and sexual torture, considering that 85-90%  of all women who give birth naturally suffer vaginal tears and/or episiotomies which are extremely painful and traumatizing, often resulting in long-term debilitating health conditions. Deprivation of my human rights would never be acceptable if I were a man. Who today would debate the “right” to own slaves?

Forced pregnancy and childbirth is no more moral than any other form of forced organ donation. No “pro-life” laws exist anywhere that force men to suffer trauma, pain, permanent damage to their bodies and risk of death from mandatory kidney donation surgery to save the life of another — even if the person in need of it is their own child who would otherwise die without it. No one has the right to the use of, or to coerce the use of, another’s body — in whole or in part — against their will.

Consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy. Medical ethics and philosophy professor David Boonin framed the argument supporting a woman’s right to choose based on consent. A woman has the right to refuse use of her body to support another potential human’s continued existence if:

1. The cost is not trivial (even “good” pregnancies in healthy women of optimal childbearing age are non-trivial).
2. The woman has not previously consented to the exact conditions of use, or the conditions which she consented to have changed.
3. The woman does not owe the recipient (fetus) compensation for causing its worsened condition.

Boonin quite specifically excludes a woman who conceived following consensual sex from obligation to provide life support for that developing entity. The fetus would not have existed without this act and its accompanying male act, and is therefore better off — not worse off. The female host has not caused any harm to the fetus at all and is therefore not required to compensate it by being an incubator. The fetus on the other hand, is harming its host, and is therefore obligated to her. And the male that has caused the woman harm by impregnating her when she didn’t want to become pregnant is therefore obligated to compensate her.

Any woman who wants to gestate some “pump and dump” ungrateful prick’s genetic material for patriarchy’s benefit in almost a year of involuntary servitude is more than welcome to do so. But no woman owes such sacrifice and martyrdom to anyone — especially not to a society that has always treated women like garbage; a society that grants full personhood to 15 second old zygotes and corporations while denying that very status of personhood to the woman in whose body that zygote is being hosted.

Forcing women to get and remain pregnant against their will is a violation of human rights, period. The architects of the UN and Article 7(g) of the Rome Statute agree. The International Criminal Court (ICC) in addressing the “most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole” has provided an international legal definition of rape. The Rome Statute has acknowledged sexual assault as both a war crime and also as a crime against humanity. The Rome Statute was adopted and opened for signature on July 17^th 1998 and was entered into force on July 1^st 2002. There are 139 signatories and 89 state parties to the statute. The Rome Statute establishes a permanent ICC body with jurisdiction over individuals limited to the crimes within its jurisdiction to prosecute. The Rome Statute defines these serious crimes as the crime of “genocide; crimes against humanity; war crimes; and the crime of aggression.”

Article 7(g) of the Rome Statute states: “crimes against humanity means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population with knowledge of the attack: Rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity.” Article 7(g) also includes the “persecution against any identifiable group or collectively on gender…or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law” as well as “other inhumane acts of similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.”

Now, this War on Women did not occur out of the blue. It began with the concept of idolizing “invade and conquer” ideologies, male-centric cults of hero worship, and the promotion of wealth accumulation through deracination and turning everything (including women) in the natural world into disposable commodities for the sole purpose of converting them into dead capital.

What we have is a predator society based on misogyny, racism, and capitalistic competition and that predation fosters aggression and manifests itself in our “culture of rape.” That we lead the world in producing serial killers speaks truth to power about the casualties of male privilege, patriarchy and capitalism. It is not the perpetrators who are solely responsible for our inequality but also those who are sitting on the sidelines doing nothing about it except covering their own asses by excluding themselves from wrongdoing. Doing nothing in situations of injustice is the same as being an enabler. Silence is consent.