Posts tagged violence
Transcend Dualism
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Picture of mouse in blender that I refuse to reblog.
If people actually enjoy that, you’re honestly beyond fucked up. To you, it may not seem like a significant life, but it is. I don’t understand cruelty for entertainment, ever.
It’s not funny if you see someone fall down stairs, it’s not funny if you see an animal get hit by a car, it’s not funny if you see someone get beaten up, it’s not funny if you physically harm someone for shits and giggles.
This disconnect between us and other animals (i include humans as animals) is the most upsetting thing ever.
I totally agree. People think I’m ‘too sensitive’, or that it’s ‘dark humor’. I say it’s sociopathic.
(Source: porcinestresssyndrome)
No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded.
If male domination is natural, based on biological imperatives, why, asks sociologist Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, must it be coercive, held in place by laws, traditions, customs, and the constant threat of violence for any woman who dares step out of line?
“The Expendables”: All-starsterone cast—and look, it’s Arnold! (plus, macho men, Bella Swan, Lisbeth Salander, and “Eat Pray Love”)
MILD SPOILERS—although really you wouldn’t be missing much.
There is a scene in The Expendables in which a good guy is hanging off a sea plane, dangling dangerously as it makes its getaway from a dockful of bad guys shooting at them. We can hear the bullets whiz by, but we don’t hear any of them hitting the metal of the plane, and of course none hits the dude—about fifty bad guys, all with automatics, shooting blindly at the plane. He makes it (who would’ve guessed?) just as the plane finally rises of the water, no problem. They turn around boldly, that same guys fits himself into the nose of the plane with sunglasses, and arms himself with an awesome machine gun. They dive and fly over the dock with all the bad guys, and he fires, and they all go “AAHHH!” and most fall into the water. Flawlessly. BUT WAIT—there’s more. As they did this, the good guy flying the plane drops this powder stuff and spreads it over the dock, and the bad guys left standing on top go, “Huh? What is this?” And then KA-BOOM! Oh, sweet, I totally didn’t see that coming. But of course the main bad guy happened to jump into the water just in time to avoid the flaming ball of what couldn’t only be white powdery stuff.
Pardon me for criticizing. After all, this is an action flick, right? The basic formula is gunfights, explosions, improbable plot, and even more improbably outcomes of action sequences, etc. This movie had all that, plus Sylvester Stallone, plus, Jason Statham, plus Jet Li, and a cameo appearance by—oh my GOSH, no way! Could that really be him? Man, that was the coolest thing, EVER!
This movie is absurd. No, no, I mean more absurd than your regular action thriller. Haven’t we seen enough of the same formula, complete with a 90+% male cast and a couple of vulnerable female love interests. I’ve had enough, but clearly, Stallone, director and star of Expendables, and Hollywood hasn’t. The only thing original here is the melting pot of some of the greatest action movie stars—those who were in actual good movies—new and old.
And I have a problem. This movie is barely watchable. There are more violent and gory films out there, but the ones I think of are the stylized films that are much more worthy of watching, better entertainment, and less predictable, so as to actually keep you on the edge guessing, instead of just waiting out the long fight sequences you can hardly follow because of the half-second cuts, until you get to the anti-climactic and predictable end.
There are good genre flicks out there because of their originality, style, well-organized plots, and entertainment factor. I like thrillers a lot; there have been made some pretty good ones out there. Horror films have their ups and downs. There are movies targeted for only a certain group of people. There are the deep films that make you think. No, I know an action flick doesn’t have to be deep or smart. You can make a good one without that. Not only was this devoid of anything deep, smart, believable (different from probable), it was full of everything their opposite: shallow, dumb, and ultimately unbelievable that it had me laughing my ass off watching it.
I wish there are better movies I could see in the theaters, but, no money. I saw this with my dad, his idea. I knew what I was going to get, so that’s what I saw. He saw a lot of the same things, but I think he was more optimistic that myself. I wish I had gone along with my parents to see Salt, an action thriller praised by critics, along with Roger Ebert, who gave it a perfect score of four stars (out of four), rare when it comes to the genre. But I guess I wanted to see good movies only with my girlfriend…I don’t know what I’m talking about anymore.
Another thing that bothers me: why are female characters always dependent on their male counterparts? A lover beats the shit out of Statham’s girlfriend, so he fights back for her. The Latina love interest walks into a room accompanied with the perfect sudden score of Latino music, lovely sounds. She fights for her life later, has a moment of boldness (only to be judged as a dumb move later), and then ends up getting killed again, but then she is saved by her macho hero, and when he has to leave she is heartbroken.
Bella Swan from Twilight depends on (omg, ROBERT!!!) Edward for her life as well as her virginity, and depends on him to make all the decisions for her. And she is pushed around by that A-hole Jacob.
This only encourages the general public that the way of the world should be that men should make all the decisions for their women, because they obviously can’t take care of themselves. Bullshit. Women can make decisions as good as men can. No gender should be judged as more worthy of decision as the other. We all have equal potential and capabilities, if we are willing to take advantage of them.
The character of Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo, has been abused all her life in a world of men, with her constitutional rights taken away, and she doesn’t have enough of the power to overtake those who rule her. But she is a damn good hacker, and completely amoral with the choices she makes, despite all the trouble she’s been in (again, not her fault), and she shows us that girls don’t need guys to protect them; sometimes they are their worst threat.
So this kind of macho movie that praises a male-dominated world, glorifying violence and women’s dependence on men, is just not worth watching.
Oh yeah, and narcissistic female characters isn’t what I’m talking about by the way. That’s completely different. That just makes them look dumb. I haven’t seen Eat Pray Love, and I don’t plan on it.
I guess I had a little too much to write. Oh well, first time on the blog, gotta start with something.
Oh—one more thing—it didn’t help to see guys holding on to their babes like cheap little ragdolls while they trailed by their men as if helplessly, when I walked out of the theater and into the mall.
3/10.
At an early age, boys are fitted with emotional straightjackets tailored by a restricted code of behavior that falsely defines masculinity. In the context of “stop crying,” “stop those emotions,” and “don’t be a sissy,” we define what it means to “Be a Man!” Adherence to this “boy code” leaves many men dissociated from their feelings and incapable of accessing, naming, sharing, or accepting many of their emotions. When men don’t understand their own emotions it becomes impossible to understand the feelings of another. This creates an “empathy-deficit disorder” that is foundational to America’s epidemic of bullying, dating abuse and gender violence. Boys are taught to be tough, independent, distrusting of other males, and at all cost to avoid anything considered feminine for fear of being associated with women. This leads many men to renounce their common humanity with women so as to experience an emotional disconnect from them. Women often become objects, used to either validate masculine insecurity or satisfy physical needs. When the validation and satisfaction ends, or is infused with anger, control or alcohol, gender violence is often the result. Violence against women is often thought of as a women’s issue; but it is a mistake to call men’s violence a women’s issue. Since men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of this violence, this men’s issue calls to question the cultural values that produce men who hurt women.
Violent, and stands by itself as an oxymoron.
Illinois Passes Law Requiring That All Rape Kits Be Tested
Facing criticism that physical evidence from sexual assault cases in Illinois often went unanalyzed, Gov. Patrick J. Quinn this week signed a law requiring the police to test all rape kits. State officials and victims’ advocates said it is the first such law in the nation.
Over the past year, critics had exposed a backlog of thousands of untested rape kits in Illinois, and officials said the law would send an important message.
“As a direct result of this law, we will increase the number of arrests and prosecutions of sex offenders and get them out of our communities and into prison,” said Lisa Madigan, the state’s attorney general.
On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch released a report showing that since 1995, only about 20 percent of rape kits, which contain physical evidence obtained from victims, could be confirmed as having been tested in Illinois. More than 4,000 kits had gone untested, the report found.
…
Under the Illinois law, local authorities must submit evidence collected from a sexual assault criminal investigation to the state crime laboratory within 10 business days. The evidence must be tested within six months “if sufficient staffing and resources are available,” according to the law.
As the article goes on to note, that’s quite the mighty loophole. It’s going to require that advocates stay on top of the issue and force the government to make sure that resources are indeed available. The Chicago Tribune provides more details on the funding situation.
But with the admittedly optimistic hope that things might go according to plan, the passage of this law is an important moment. It takes some degree of responsibility for the rape kit backlog, and acknowledges it as a legitimate problem. It also sets a new minimum standard regarding response for other states dealing with the exact same issue. It’s sad that this is the first law of its kind, when it requires nothing more than basic responsibility to crime victims. But it’s positive that type of law that was well overdue for its first finally has one.
Of course, there are good reasons to ensure that rape kits don’t come to be seen as the be all and end all of sexual violence investigations. Rape kits are primarily useful in cases where the perpetrator is unknown, or a particular suspect denies any sexual contact with the accuser. In cases where a victim knows hir rapist and the accused claims that all sexual contact was consensual — a majority of cases — the rape kit doesn’t do a whole lot. Unless there are major physical injuries, which there usually aren’t, a rape kit can’t really tell anyone whether the contact was consensual or non-consensual.
But I say that anyone who subjects themselves to what is usually the indignity and invasion of a rape kit examination damn well deserves to have hir law enforcement agency take that effort and sacrifice seriously. Sexual assault victims don’t go for rape kit examinations because they think it will be fun — they usually go because they want justice, and want and expect to be taken seriously by investigators. They go because they rightly think that the violation of their bodies matter. And everyone else needs to start acting like those violations matter, too.
Further, while rape kits are frequently not integral to the rape case for which they were taken — again, where the accused admits sexual contact — with only about 20% of rape kits being tested, it seems that we sure as hell can’t trust police to pick and choose which kits are processed. Additionally, such kits can help to link known suspects to other crimes where a suspect’s DNA is unidentified. The failure to test rape kits is one way that a lot of serial rapists go undetected for years. And while the number of such cases may be low compared to the overall number of rape kits that are tested, I’d say that in a climate where rape accusers are so rarely taken seriously by police, overkill is both a nice change of pace and a potential show of good faith to do right by sexual assault survivors in the future.
If the law is implemented properly, I think Illinois will see an increase in identifying unknown perpetrators, and linking perpetrators whose identities are known to other sex crimes where there was no DNA match. And that is a good thing, an important thing, even though it’s not the only thing.
Rape myths will persist. Rape apologism will continue largely unchecked. Undoubtedly, police will still fail to follow up on cases even when all rape kits are tested. And even serial rapists will walk free. But if the law is actually enforced, victims won’t be traumatized by what they frequently refer to as “the second rape,” only to find out that they went through the process just to have their kit sit untested on a dusty shelf years later. That alone, in my view, may not be enough, but is well worth the passage of this law and every single dollar spent to put it into effect.
WTF
sex-torture as comedy
“This year’s Hot Tub Time Machine features a scene where a group of strangers circle two grown men in a bathroom and force one man to give the other a blowjob, while they both sob. Also from this year: in Get Him to the Greek the main character is forced by his friends to go off with a woman who tries to (or maybe does? the camera cuts away) put a dildo up his bum while he cries and begs her not to. And in the mother of all bromances, The 40 Year Old Virgin, a group of friends put a porn movie on surround sound and then lock their sexually shy friend in the room alone and refuse to let him out. Note: all of these scenes are supposed to be funny. Not funny with a bitter edge, just straight up, laugh out loud funny. In other words, the target audiences of these films are asked to identify with a group of characters on a quest, and then guffaw when said characters are sexually humiliated. That’s some deep shit. ”
“When I started out thinking about the recurring scenes of sex-torture in recent bromances, I figured that—apart from being reinforcements of homophobic culture on overdrive—they must have some kind of cathartic function for audiences. The entire bromance genre is based on heteronormative adult men’s inability to express love and affection for each other. Consciously, writers write sex-torture as comedy because they think sexual violation is funny. Unconsciously, I think we can argue that these scenes exist because our culture of masculinity uses the threat of non-consensual sex to punish men for natural feelings of affection and admiration for their friends. “
excuse me sir your misogyny is showing
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Don’t call me bitch.Oh, I can call myself a free bitch, baby, or Bitch Queen of the Universe, or a babe in total control of herself, but these are different than 99.9% of conversational use — they evoke power, turning the classical definition of ‘bitch’ on its head. Reclaiming the word, turning it into a compliment rather than a tool used to remind women of their ‘place.’
So what is a bitch?
Let’s check out the top definitions at Urban Dictionary, font of all things worth knowing.
(1) Word used to describe the act of whining excessively. (2) Person who rides specifically in the middle of a front-seatting only car meant for 2 passengers or less. (3) Modern-day servant; A person who performs tasks for another, usually degrading in status. (4) Term used to exclaim hardship.
A bitch is someone who whines irritatingly, someone who takes the worst seat in the vehicle, a servant who performs degrading tasks, or something awful that happens to someone (‘Wow, that’s a bitch.’) Catching the theme, here? You don’t want to be a bitch. A bitch is annoying, cowed, humiliated by others, hardly human, more of a thing.
“Don’t take things so personally. Just because I say something is a bitch totally doesn’t mean I’m calling you a bitch. Chill out.” Nope. ‘Bitch’ is misogynistic language. Look around — who’s female around here? Me. Just me. Scuse me while I stand the hell up for myself. Examine: who ‘rides bitch’ in any sort of vehicle? The woman. When someone is another’s ‘bitch,’ they are subservient. This phrase is almost uniquely used to describe men put in emasculating situations, because guess who’s the bitch all the rest of the time? Women. You quote Pulp Fiction with your buddies:
(paraphrased):
“Does he look like a bitch?”
“No.”
“Then why’d you try to fuck him like a bitch?”
I think this describes the bit where Marsellus Wallace is raped. Note: ‘to fuck him like a bitch’ = rape. Bitches are raped. Other people do what they like, sexually, with bitches, regardless of the fact that the bitch is actually a person. I feel threatened that you guys quote this, giggling: bitches get fucked. Fucking is something that males do to others rather than a fifty-fifty between two consenting individuals. Bitches get raped.
You following? The word bitch pertains to women. Look around. I am the only woman here. And if I weren’t, you can bet your booties I’d still be hollering about it, because you’d still be talking about me, you’d just also be victimizing several other ladies, too. And even if you’re definitely not talking about me, I’ll still be talking about it, because calling a woman a bitch because she’s strong and opinionated is not okay — it’s a way to silence her.
*I spent the weekend in rather loathsome company and BOY DO I HAVE THINGS TO SAY.
**Calling a male a bitch is a whole ‘nother post, reflecting classic heterosexual insecurity with anything that stretches the boundaries of masculinity.
Labels: bitch, sexual violence 