it's the women

it's always the women (and children). they usually don't fight back. they are easy targets. you hurt a woman and  you hurt her entire family. this time it's in africa. it has happened everywhere though. it IS happening everywhere though. skin color has nothing to do with this. it's greed and it's evil and it's power hungry and it's madness. it's the evil that men do

In a Guinea Seized by Violence, Women as Prey
By ADAM NOSSITER
CONAKRY, Guinea — Cellphone snapshots, ugly and hard to refute, are circulating here and feeding rage: they show that women were the particular targets of the Guinean soldiers who suppressed a political demonstration at a stadium here last week, with victims and witnesses describing rapes, beatings and acts of intentional humiliation.

“I can’t sleep at night, after what I saw,” said one middle-aged woman from an established family here, who said she had been beaten and sexually molested. “And I am afraid. I saw lots of women raped, and lots of dead.”

One photograph shows a naked woman lying on muddy ground, her legs up in the air, a man in military fatigues in front of her. In a second picture a soldier in a red beret is pulling the clothes off a distraught-looking woman half-lying, half-sitting on muddy ground. In a third a mostly nude woman lying on the ground is pulling on her trousers...........

ms alexandrovna hooks us up with a favorite person in the universe story

how can you NOT have a soft spot for the nutty, wacky, lovable, woman-hating, JOE THE FUCKING MORON plumber??????

(p.s. i'm NO fan of pelosi but i'd NEVER threaten to beat her OR anyone else)

Knuckle-dragging wannabe right-wing attention whore makes news, again...

-LARISA ALEXANDROVNA

You must be asking yourself which knuckle-dragging wannabe right-wing attention whore has made the news yet again? After all, there are so many of these evolutionary stay-behind types to choose from. Could it be Ann Coulter? Could it be Shiksa Malkin? No, today's knuckle-dragging glue-sniffer is not even as accomplished as these two ladies. He is simply a walking poser- poster whose only day-time job is to say stupid things.

Joe Wurzelbacher - a.k.a Joe the Moron - keeps getting invited to right-wing events for reasons no one can figure out (no one sane that is). Perhaps it is support for violence against women that makes him such a draw for the extremist crowd? Apparently so. Here is his latest audition for employment with Fox (h/t Think Progress):

This past weekend, at the right wing’s RightOnline blogger conference in Pittsburgh — sponsored by Americans for Prosperity — Alternet’s Adele Stan reported that Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher attacked Nancy Pelosi for calling teabaggers “un-American.” (In fact, Pelosi said “drowning out opposing views is un-American.”) Wurzelbacher said that in the good ol’ days, he would have been able to physically “beat” Pelosi:..........

more on sodini

my posting on him yesterday is here

more to show you how hateful he was of women. more to show you what kinds of books he was reading (i know sometimes we read books JUST to understand another's point of view. i don't think this was true in sodini's case though. he was reading about men owning women because that's what he would have LIKED to happen in his life). i guess even a fake tan couldn't help him

oh, one more thing. my mother was domineering too. i just became MORE domineering. some thinghappened in my life i don't talk about (too much). it happened when i was younger. it is something that could have effected my relationships for the rest of my life (well, it still does but i do NOT let it get the better of me). what i chose to do though is to USE my experiences to help others out of the muck and murk. i didn't use it to HURT anyone else
(and granted, below IS a sensationalized headline)

Shooter Read Sexist Christian Author's Book Before Pittsburgh Female Aerobics Class Massacre
Posted by Bruce Wilson, AlterNet
As George Sodini wrote on December 29, 2008, "Just got back from tanning, been doing this for a while. No gym today, my elbow is sore again. I actually look good. I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne - yet 30 million women rejected me - over an 18 or 25-year period."

On Tuesday August 4th, 2009, computer systems analyst Sodini walked into a Pittsburgh gym, pulled guns out of a duffle bag, turned off the lights, and sprayed bullets into a LA Fitness Center woman's aerobics class of roughly thirty, killing three. The leader of the class, who had just announced that she was pregnant, was wounded along with at least eight others, some of whom were shot multiple times.

Media analysis has so far ignored or glossed over Sodini's religious affiliations but the shooter's Internet diary suggest his last readings were the Bible and a book by a Texas evangelist, R.B. Thieme, Jr. who has written that husbands own their wives, as literal property and promoted an odd teaching that for each man on Earth there exists only one correct "right woman" in all creation...............

oh my goddess

let's hope this comes to fruition. it's not much, but it's a start. we all need to start with baby steps anyway. as i posted yesterday, there is just too much violence against women (against everyone these days) anyway. we must stop it. we must

Afghanistan to outlaw violence against women: US official

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is poised to sign into law a bill which would punish those who perpetrate violence against women, a US lawmaker told a briefing Tuesday.

"We've learned in the last 24 hours or so that a bill that's been pending in the parliament in Afghanistan and been reviewed by the ministry of justice to eliminate violence against women is going to be signed by President Karzai," US lawmaker Carolyn Maloney said at the briefing on Capitol Hill.

Under the bill, men who bar women from getting an education, working, or obtaining healthcare could face six months in prison, said Afghanistan's Minister of Public Health Sayed Mohammed Amin Fatimie, who was at the briefing along with Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States, Said Tayeb Jawad.............

you know, the more i read about eve ensler

the more i like her. she's a courageous, intelligent and funny woman (of course the following video isn't funny at all)


Rape-camps lurk in the history of your gadgets
Posted by Cory Doctorow
On Boing Boing Gadgets, this wrenching video in which Eve Ensler explains that Congolese militias use rape to enforce discipline among a slave workforce that mines columbite-tantalite ore, a common raw material for many devices. ......................

because we lie

and when we're NOT lying, we're just asking for it anyway. you know, we dress provocatively (and even if we're in a burka, we're STILL asking for it)

Actual Rape Victim Jailed for “False Report”

I just came across this story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (h/t), and I am absolutely fuming. A woman was raped at gunpoint while working for a convenience store, and reported her rape — as, you know, cops, the government, and well-meaning people are always encouraging her and other rape victims to do. Her rape was even “real” rape — since, you know, it was at gunpoint and committed by a total stranger and therefore lacking most sufficient “gray areas.”

But still, the police did not believe the victim. Worse, they didn’t just laugh at her, as many other victims report happening to them. They didn’t ask her if she really deserved it for X reason, or if she had sex with the gunman consensually and then just regretted it later. They didn’t ask her if she really wanted to press charges, because hey, this could ruin this man’s life, you know! All of these are outcomes far more than bad enough, and which still happen far too often, but didn’t happen here.

Instead, they accused her of a false report and put her in jail.

While she was in jail, her rapist went out and raped more women, and was eventually caught. ............

this is how we bring

democracy (and freedom and liberty) to iraq AND IT'S WOMEN

Iraqi women 'lack basic services'
Women in Iraq still lack security and basic services, despite an overall drop in violence six years after the US-led invasion, aid agency Oxfam says.

Reporting on a survey of about 1,700 women in five provinces taken last year, Oxfam described their plight as a "silent emergency".

It suggested more than half the women had suffered from violence.

A quarter did not have daily access to water supplies, and more than three-quarters were not getting pensions.

Last month, Iraq's minister for women resigned, saying the government was not taking the plight of women seriously.

Oxfam said: "Iraqi women are suffering a silent emergency', trapped in a downward spiral of poverty, desperation and personal insecurity despite an overall decrease in violence in the country."

The survey, released to mark International Women's Day, suggested that more than 20% of widows had been victims of domestic violence. ...........

i am livid about what i read earlier

today in the daily news (i said the daily news NOT the new york post)
are they REALLY effing implying it's RIHANNA'S FAULT she (allegedly) got the shite beaten out of her? is that what they're REALLY saying? sounds like it to me

(can women be violent? absolutely yes. can women be idiots? absolutely yes. can women yell and scream? absolutely yes. do women ASK to be domestically abused? ABSOLUTELY NO)

Chris Brown learns anger management; could Rihanna use it too?

...............But insiders are rumbling that Chris shouldn't be taking the anger management classes alone. "Rihanna is temperamental, too," says our snitch. "They're both too hot-headed for their own good."

Adds another source: "It didn't help that Rihanna grabbed the keys out of his rented Lamborghini and threw them down the street. She knew it would really infuriate Chris, and it worked.".......................

so grabbing keys and throwing them on the street is the same thing as begging to be someone's (alleged) punching bag? NOT IN THIS EFFING LIFETIME

this is some kind of (unfunny) joke, right? they really didn't just say she deserved what she (allegedly) got, right?

this is NOT good

young girls thinking it's OK for a woman to be battered by her partner. there is NOTHING that can justify domestic violence (there are cases where it's woman on man, but that is rare indeed)

this is disturbing but not totally unexpected

i don't think ANY teenagers read my blog. in case any accidentally stumble across this posting......domestic violence is NEVER acceptable. NEVER

if you are being abused LEAVE IMMEDIATELY.

Many teens blame Rihanna, say dating violence normal
1 in 10 teens suffer abuse in romantic relationships, and many think it's often justified

By Megan Twohey and Bonnie Miller Rubin | Tribune reporters

Ed Loos, a junior at Lake Forest High School, said a common reaction among students to Chris Brown's alleged attack on Rihanna goes something like this: "Ha! She probably did something to provoke it."

In Chicago, Sullivan High School sophomore Adeola Matanmi has heard the same.

"People said, 'I would have punched her around too,' " Matanmi said. "And these were girls!"

As allegations of battery swirl around the famous couple, experts on domestic violence say the response from teenagers just a few years younger shows the desperate need to educate this age group about dating violence. Their acceptance, or even approval, of abuse in romantic relationships is not a universal reaction. But it comes at a time when 1 in 10 teenagers has suffered such abuse and females ages 16 to 24 experience the highest rates of any age group, research shows.

In recent years, some schools and youth organizations have started educating teens about the dangers of dating violence. Rhode Island and Virginia have adopted laws requiring such instruction in the public schools.....................

Related links

• Warning signs, sources of help

• Caring eyes focus on domestic violence court

• How can domestic abuse be stopped?

• One woman's struggle to escape abuse

• Her hope, and then her curse

• Courts are failing battered women

• State cuts program assisting victims of domestic violence

• Global eye to be kept on abusers

• Slain woman's family sues

• GPS seen as way to aid abuse victims

• Abusive parolees targeted

• Murder exposes flaws in parole system

• GPS may help enforce restraining orders

• Domestic violence services see cuts

• Domestic violence aid offered in victim's name

• The law didn't save her

f**k terrence howard

now remember, this is the VERY SAME terrence howard who said women were UNCLEAN if they don't use baby wipes after 'freshening up' (and he said so VERY MUCH MORE ABOUT 'EM TOO. just check out that first link). what a gem that terrence howard is!



Terrence Howard's Fists Of Fury

ctor, a Chris Brown supporter, was once nabbed for beating wife

FEBRUARY 17--After Chris Brown's arrest for assaulting his girlfriend Rihanna, the actor Terrence Howard chose to salute the alleged batterer. "It's just life, man. Chris is a great guy. He'll be alright," said Howard. "And Rihanna knows he loves her, you know? They'll be alright." Though Howard would later apologize for his remarks, the star's own rap sheet offers an explanation as to why he would jump to the side of an accused domestic abuser. Police and court records reveal that Howard, 39, was once arrested for a similar crime, the details of which have not been previously reported. The actor, who co-starred in "Iron Man" and was nominated in 2006 for an Academy Award for his role in "Hustle & Flow," was arrested by Pennsylvania cops in September 2001 for assaulting his estranged wife. According to a Whitemarsh Police Department report, after Howard and Lori McCommas argued on the phone, the actor warned, "Don't disrespect me by hanging up on me or I'll come over and hurt you.".................

watch it!

Rhianna, V-Day, and Violence Against Women

Posted by: Lauren
from feministe

the point of this story is NOT what religion

these people were. it's to point out the VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN (which transends all religions, all colors, all classes, all sects, all countries). and please. SECOND DEGREE MURDER?

Man arrested in wife’s beheading
Authorities say suspect is founder of cable TV network for Muslims

msnbc.com and NBC News
BUFFALO, N.Y. - A suburban Buffalo man who founded a cable TV station to promote better understanding of Muslims in the U.S. has been arrested on charges he beheaded his wife.

Orchard Park police arrested Muzzammil Hassan, 44, on Thursday for investigation of second-degree murder, The Buffalo News reported.

Police identified the victim as Aasiya Z. Hassan, 37. Her body was found at his business, Bridges TV........

even with everything else happening in the congo

the violence against women and girls is unimaginable. it's a horror show that you can't just switch off. it's something we ALL must be aware of and something we ALL must help to stop NOW

The Atrocities Committed Against Women and Girls in the Congo Defy Imagination
By Marianne Schnall, The Women's Media Center.

Behind the headlines heralding potentially positive developments in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), women and girls continue to be at risk. Media outlets report the arrest of rebel leader General Laurent Nkunda and the possibility of peace openings, but the eastern region where women and girls have been savagely raped and mutilated remains traumatized.

With all the bad news facing the world right now, you might prefer not knowing the horrific details of these women’s stories. “Yes, it’s difficult to hear about,” says playwright/activist Eve Ensler, “but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hear.”

It is precisely because Ensler feels not enough people are aware of the atrocities taking place in the Congo that she, and her anti-violence against women organization V-Day, are going on the road this month, in a five-city U.S. tour featuring her in conversation with Dr. Denis Mukwege, a heroic gynecologist and the director of Panzi Hospital in eastern Congo who treats, performs surgeries and offers counseling to the women there. Together Mukwege and Ensler will expose the extreme cases of violence against women in the DRC -- to date an estimated 400,000 women and girls have been raped -- and relay the stories of survivors who are coming together and breaking the silence.

The disturbing stories that have come out of the Congo defy imagination: women and young girls being raped by militia men in front of their families; rape victims ranging from as young as six months to as old as 83 years; women and girls faced with unwanted pregnancies and raped intentionally by men known to have AIDS. There is also a devastating epidemic of women and girls whose vaginas and reproductive organs have been completely destroyed from being violated with guns, bottles and sticks, often resulting in a condition called fistula, a rupture that results in the uncontrollable leakage of urine and feces. ..........

i can

Can You Name 16 Forms Of Gender Violence?

jessica is MORE than right

violence against women has nothing to do with ANYTHING other than the partner is insane (well those are MY words)


Posted by Jessica

It's not a "Facebook crime," it's domestic violence

I don't care if you call it domestic violence or intimate partner violence - but stop calling it a Facebook crime, or a MySpace murder. It has nothing to do with social networking and everything to do with violence against women.

Take this latest story from the BBC:

A man has been jailed for life for stabbing his wife to death over a posting she made on the social networking site Facebook.

Wayne Forrester, 34, told police he was devastated that his wife Emma, also 34, had changed her online profile to "single" days after he had moved out.

Forrester did not murder his wife because of her Facebook status, he murdered her because he was an abuser.

The couple, who had been together for 15 years, had a "volatile" marriage, jurors were told..............

lest you think the article i am going to link to

was written by some commie upstart military hating, man hating babe who doesn't know shite about the military life OR anything else, let me tell you right now, that is NOT the case here:

...........Ann Wright is a retired Army Reserve colonel and a 29-year veteran of the Army and Army Reserves. She was a diplomat in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the Department of State on March 19, 2003, in opposition to the Iraq war. She has written several articles on violence against women in the military, including "Sexual Assault in the Military: A DoD Cover-Up?", "U.S. Military Keeping Secrets About Female Soldiers' 'Suicides'?" and "Is There an Army Cover Up of Rape and Murder of Women Soldiers?". She is also the co-author of the book, "Dissent: Voices of Conscience."..............

i always MUST mention lavena johnson (I WILL ALWAYS MENTION LAVENA JOHNSON UNTIL THE ARMY ADMITS SHE WAS MURDERED AND HER MURDERED IS FOUND AND CONVICTED) when stories of women in the service come up. ann wright's article (below the video) is eye opening. nothing we don't already know but nothing anyone is doing anything about either.

our military women (and men) deserve honor. they and their families do not deserve the bullshite they are getting

"My Daughter's Dream Became a Nightmare": The Murder of Military Women Continues

by: Ann Wright, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
"My daughter's dream became a nightmare," sadly said Gloria Barrios, seven months after her daughter, US Air Force Senior Airman Blanca Luna, was murdered on Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas.

On March 7, 2008, Senior Airman Luna, 27, was found dead in her room at the Sheppard Air Force Base Inn, an on-base lodging facility. She had been stabbed in the back of the neck with a short knife. Luna, an Air Force Reservist with four years of prior military service in the Marine Corps including a tour in Japan, was killed three days before she was to graduate from an Air Conditioning, Ventilation and Heating training course.

When she was notified of her daughter's death, she was handed a letter from Major General K.C. McClain, commander of the Air Force Personnel Center, which stated that her daughter "was found dead on 7 March 2008 at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, as the result of an apparent homicide." When her body was returned to her family for burial, Barrios and other family members saw bruises on Blanca's face and wounds on her fingers as if she were defending herself. One of the investigators later told Mrs. Barrios that Blanca had been killed in an "assassin-like" manner. Friends say that she told them some in her unit "had given her problems."............

yesterday i posted a fake beer ad

using a woman's body as a beer holder (and f**k object. AT THE SAME TIME). that was disturbing to me.

then today i saw this and yesterday's ad DOESN'T EVEN COME CLOSE TO DISTURBING

silly me - i guess a dead woman can still be a sexy woman

Wrangler features sexydead models

Apparently the cowboy jeans company decided to "spice up" their ads a bit: by featuring corpses along with the tagline, "We are animals." Because, you know, murder is so hot right now. The one after the jump is so disturbing (trigger warning) that I honestly felt like I might throw up. I don't think I've ever seen the sexualization of violence against women so disturbingly portrayed on an ad before.

They also come with a live ad that's being run in France (along with these gems), as Melissa at Shakesville says, is "featuring the jeans models engaging in some animalism pre-death...?--I've no idea. Don't ask me to explain. I cannot." Took the words out of my mouth.........

from feministing

a composite of a bunch of stories about (yes, you guessed it), rape and violence against women. i get tired. very tired. tired (and angry) of talking and lecturing and yelling and screaming. but i'll never stop until violence against my sisters HERE and EVERYWHERE stops.

Sexism, racism and violence against women: When there are too many stories to keep up with

Trigger Warning

As I was going through my Google Reader today, I kept getting hit with story after story violence against women, of discrimination, racism and rape. We post on these stories often, so it's not as if I was surprised. But seeing them all together kind of overpowered me, so I figured instead of writing separate posts for each of these horrible stories - I'd put them together in one, so you could see what I'm seeing: the connection between racism and violence against women, the fear of women's sexuality, the straight-up awfulness of misogyny. (Not a light post, I warn you.)

Yet another woman in the military was killed, this time by her partner. Army 2nd Lt. Holley Wimunc, a nurse from Dubuque, Iowa, was murdered by her husband, Marine Cpl. John Wimunc, to whom she was in the middle of a divorce with and had a restraining order against. Wimunc is one of many military woman killed in recent months; Army Specialist Megan Touma was seven months pregnant when she was murdered and Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach was eight months pregnant and killed by a man she was seeing, also in the military. And of course, there's Pfc. LaVena Johnson - whose death has gotten the least amount of media coverage. From Salon:...............

picture: take back the night

bringing (more) our democracy to iraq

yeah, things are getting better all right
then again, it's ok because they're JUST women
Violations of 'Islamic teachings' take deadly toll on Iraqi women
Arwa Damon
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The images in the Basra police file are nauseating: Page after page of women killed in brutal fashion -- some strangled to death, their faces disfigured; others beheaded. All bear signs of torture. The women are killed, police say, because they failed to wear a headscarf or because they ignored other "rules" that secretive fundamentalist groups want to enforce.
"Fear, fear is always there," says 30-year-old Safana, an artist and university professor. "We don't know who to be afraid of. Maybe it's a friend or a student you teach. There is no break, no security. I don't know who to be afraid of."
Her fear is justified. Iraq's second-largest city, Basra, is a stronghold of conservative Shia groups. As many as 133 women were killed in Basra last year -- 79 for violation of "Islamic teachings" and 47 for so-called honor killings, according to IRIN, the news branch of the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
One glance through the police file is enough to understand the consequences. Basra's police chief, Gen. Abdul Jalil Khalaf, flips through the file, pointing to one unsolved case after another. Watch Khalaf show evidence of the brutality »......

more examples of how we are

bringing freedom and democracy to iraq

Vigilantes kill 40 women in Iraq's south
Religious Vigilantes Have Killed 40 Women This Year Police in Southern City of Basra Says
SINAN SALAHEDDINAP News

Religious vigilantes have killed at least 40 women this year in the southern Iraqi city of Basra because of how they dressed, their mutilated bodies found with notes warning against "violating Islamic teachings," the police chief said Sunday. Maj. Gen. Jalil Khalaf blamed sectarian groups that he said were trying to impose a strict interpretation of Islam. They dispatch patrols of motorbikes or unlicensed cars with tinted windows to accost women not wearing traditional dress and head scarves, he added.
"The women of Basra are being horrifically murdered and then dumped in the garbage with notes saying they were killed for un-Islamic behavior," Khalaf told The Associated Press. He said men with Western clothes or haircuts are also attacked in Basra, an oil-rich city some 30 miles from the Iranian border and 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.........