Music. Tea. Justice. (Bitey mad lady with a love of physics, food, and fiction, and a hyper-literate prog rock soundtrack.)
What I do want to tell you is that you need to stop using the “wives, sisters, daughters” argument when you are talking to people defending the Steubenville rapists. Or any rapists. Or anyone who commits any kind of crime, violent or otherwise, against a woman.
In case you’re unfamiliar with this line of rhetoric, it’s the one that goes like this:
You should stop defending the rapists and start caring about the victim. Imagine if she was your sister, or your daughter, or your wife. Imagine how badly you would feel if this happened to a woman that you cared about.
Framing the issue this way for rape apologists can seem useful. I totally get that. It feels like you’re humanizing the victim and making the event more relatable, more sympathetic to the person you’re arguing with.
You know what, though? Saying these things is not helpful; in fact, it’s not even helping to humanize the victim. What you are actually doing is perpetuating rape culture by advancing the idea that a woman is only valuable in so much as she is loved or valued by a man.
The Steubenville rape victim was certainly someone’s daughter. She may have been someone’s sister. Someday she might even be someone’s wife. But these are not the reasons why raping her was wrong. This rape, and any rape, was wrong because women are people. Women are people, rape is wrong, and no one should ever be raped. End of story.
The “wives, sisters, daughters” line of argument comes up all the fucking time. President Obama even used it in his State of the Union address this year, saying,
“We know our economy is stronger when our wives, mothers, and daughters can live their lives free from discrimination in the workplace, and free from the fear of domestic violence.”
This device, which Obama has used on more than one occasion, is reductive as hell. It defines women by their relationships to other people, rather than as people themselves. It says that women are only important when they are married to, have given birth to, or have been fathered by other people. It says that women are only important because of who they belong to.
Women are not possessions.
Women are people.
I seriously cannot believe that I have to say this in 2013.
I only posted a small piece of the article but its brilliant. Please go read the rest of it. The “lets protect women because they are our mothers, sisters, and wives” crap needs to go.
The whole thing is amazing. Bolded for emphasis.
another thing about
“our wives, mothers, and daughters”
it leaves women out of the conversation. it’s framed in such a way that it is a man talking only to men about THEIR wives and THEIR mothers and THEIR daughters.
i know you could argue that the speaker could easily be “including” women in their address, but somehow i don’t think that’s so.
If women were included in the conversation then the language wouldn’t be othering rape victims. There would be language in those speeches that address the audience as if rape victims or potential victims are among them. But they never do that. It’s always, “someone else” or “someone who isn’t here that doesn’t get a say in this conversation”
Yes, I always noticed that. It always frames rape as someone elses problem which is fucked up.
(Source: lipsredasroses)
flower exposed to radiation from #fukishima nuclear facility Japan
This is supposedly a byproduct of the nuclear power plant disaster, yeah?
‘cause that happened in 2011, whereas instances of this photo dating from 2008 onward can be found all over the internet. I’m pretty sure this is just your average, mutated flower. Why wouldn’t there be a whole field of mutant plants? This kind of stuff happens to flowers more than you’d think, and particularly to daisies. More mutant flowers here and explanations of what can cause this kind of abnormal growth!
But yeah once again tumblr is a haven of false ‘facts.’
In which Gab provides context for my earlier post.
Imma get all science on this and talk about cesium-137, which is one of the radioactive isotopes released in the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. Technically, cesium-137 behaves chemically as potassium does, so it shouldn’t cause mutations. Actually at Chernobyl and in parts of Japan (conducted by NGOs) sunflowers and other flowers (such as amaranth) have been planted to reduce the radiation in soil since the plants use the isotopes to grow. While these plants become radioactive, I don’t think there’s any evidence that they are mutated. Once radiation is removed from the soil, the plants should be harvested, composted and stored (since they are still radioactive and all).
I CONGRATULATE WHOMEVER MADE THIS
THANK YOU
YOU ARE WONDERFUL YES
I AM ON MY ART HISTORY TRIP RN AND THE VAN IS LAUGHING ABOUT THIS
BLESS YOU.
OH MY GOD YES
(Source: alternativecoreworkout)
Everytime I see this I feel sad.
It’s okay Pluto. I’m not a planet either.
Stfu Pluto IS a planet!
Saying Pluto isn’t a planet is like saying Geri isn’t a Spice Girl
Please guys, come on. Pluto just isn’t a planet. Pluto is cool and groovy and we should love it for what it is but we shouldn’t force our expectations on it. Let Pluto be Pluto. It doesn’t need this kind of pressure.
(Source: tastefullyoffensive)
