This Week in Misogyny is in Love with Gamora

This week y’all get a couple special sections, because dear lord was there a lot of religious (and atheist) misogyny this week, but to make up for it there’s also some vintage misandry and other cool books. Plus, the most delightful video about dick pics ever! Other than that, it’s business as usual, by which I mean the usual assortment of assholes and fuckery. (As usual, trigger warnings for pretty much everything apply.)

Two 19-year-old Minnesota men are facing child pornography charges after filming themselves having sex with a 15-year-old girl and then showing the video to their friends and hockey teammates. They’ve tried to claim that it doesn’t qualify as child porn because she consented, but that’s irrelevant under state law and anyway, the age of consent in Minnesota is 16.

A teen girl in India was applauded by local police for chopping off her uncle’s penis when he tried to rape her for the second time.

Residents of Richmond, California, have been showing up to city council meetings just so they can heckle openly lesbian councilwoman and vice mayor Jovanka Beckles. Beckles hasn’t been shy about telling people to fuck off, which led one of her fellow councilmembers to say, “She’s got a short fuse. Some people don’t care for her lifestyle. I don’t care for it myself, but she takes that in a homophobic way. I’m not homophobic — my ex-wife is a lesbian.” Which, is just so fucking clueless that all I can do is laugh (since I can’t actually smack him upside the head).

I can’t even tell you how much I love Emma Watson trolling the Turkish politician who said women shouldn’t laugh in public.

Bad Religion

• Christian radio host Rick Wiles wants Ebola to come here so it can “solve America’s problems with atheism, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, pornography, and abortion.” But he also thinks Obama is going to give us all Ebola (hidden in vaccines) so he can take over the country and throw all of us into FEMA camps. Mmmkay.
• Pastor Mark Driscoll‘s rampant misogyny has gotten so bad that even other evangelicals have started to distance themselves from his teachings.
• Pastor John Hagee, during his sermon last Sunday, told “lazy” people on welfare that they should “get your nasty self off the couch and go get a job!” From the job tree that magically provides transportation and childcare, right?
• Some fuckers gave a standing ovation to Father Gilbert Dutel when he denied allegations that he’d sexually abused a 9-year-old boy in the 1970s. Given that both of the other priests named by the victim were either convicted of statutory rape or confessed to abuse (and that false accusations are extremely rare), there’s pretty good odds they were cheering for a rapist. Good job, assholes.
• Hemant Mehta named his new book God is an Abusive Boyfriend (And You Should Break Up). Yeah, there’s a lot of fucked up misogyny in some religions (see above), but you don’t get to joke about domestic violence to make that point. Women already feel unwelcome in atheism, and shit like this doesn’t help.

(Other) Terrible People of the Week!

• Tulsa police officer Shannon Kepler, who shot and killed his daughter’s boyfriend when she brought him over to introduce him to her parents, then tried to shoot her and her younger brother (who was grazed with a bullet). He had previously kicked her out of the house for making unspecified bad “life decisions.” His wife, also a police officer, has been charged as an accessory.
• Judge Lance Mason, who beat his wife while their young kids were in the car with them. He later threatened to shoot himself; police removed a small arsenal from his house.
• Female MRAs. (Autoplay warning at the link.)
• Australian Employment Minister Sen. Eric Abetz, who still thinks that abortion causes breast cancer.
• Fox News’s Andrea Tantaros and Eric Bolling, for freaking out about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s recent statements about the conservative male justices having a “blind spot” on women’s issues. Tantaros accused her of misandry, while Bolling claimed that she didn’t understand that the case wasn’t about all birth control, even though the ruling did apply to all BC, not just the four kinds Hobby Lobby sued over.
• Larry King, for asking Anna Paquin if she’s “a non-practicing bisexual” and implying that she can’t still be bi since she married a man. (And props to her for setting him straight. Pun unintended.)
• Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, whose latest excuse for not making a movie about Black Widow or any other female superheroes is that they already have so many franchises about men that they don’t have room in their schedule to add a lady franchise without putting one of the current ones on hold for a few years.
• The organizers of WisCon, who despite writing a really strict anti-harassment policy, still let in Jim Frenkel, who’d harassed multiple attendees in past years. After a barrage of complaints, including from his past victims who weren’t expecting to have to face him there again since it’s supposed to be a “feminist” con, they said he’d be banned for the next four years, but could appeal to be let back in if he was really sorry. So, to hell with his victims, basically. (H/t Skepchick)
• The anonymous NCAA coach who responded to the hiring of Becky Hammon as an assistant coach for the San Antonio Spurs by saying that women shouldn’t coach Division I men’s basketball because “A big part of being a college coach is molding boys into successful men. Obviously a woman can’t do that. I just don’t see a place for it.”
• Photographer Raj Shetye, who did a fashion shoot in India that depicted the models being assaulted on a bus, which echoes the 2012 gang rape on a bus in Delhi that resulted in the victim’s death.
• The Nebraska DMV, which is refusing to issue a driver’s license to a woman who got married while living in Iowa in 2009 and took her wife’s last name; since the state doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage, they claim that they can’t accept her marriage license as a proof of name change. (The state, of course, hasn’t had a problem with her filing taxes under her married name for the last three years.)
• Dana McLendon, for creating a hot/crazy matrix to teach men about women. Apparently women who rate less than a 5 in hotness might as well not exist, and none of us fall below a 4 in craziness. Us redheads garner particular suspicion, but be careful, because a woman who’s too hot might actually be a (insert transphobic slur here). FFS.
• Nine West, for adding a “Shoe Collections” sidebar on their website that consisted solely of shoes for “Starter Husband Hunting” and the “First Day of Kindergarten,” because really, what else matters in a woman’s life?

Because of course no moms work! And “We got a shoe for that” is terrible grammar. Screencap from Nine West.

Eyerolls at Naomi Schaefer Riley of the New York Post, who read Michelle Goldberg’s transphobic bullshit and decided that it meant that feminism was imploding. Every movement has its dipshits; the rest of us are doing just fine and we aren’t going anywhere. Sorry not sorry.

I can’t really tell if Mike Fleming, Jr’s whining about the possibility of a Ghostbusters reboot with a female cast is supposed to be satire or if he just pissed off his headline writer because he legit feels like he got “slimed.”

Meanwhile, we’ll finally be getting a female superhero movie in 2017, from Sony. No word on which superheroine will star.

If you loved Guardians of the Galaxy, you have screenwriter Nicole Perlman to thank; she’s the first woman to write a film for Marvel Studios. And while there were still a few damsel-in-distress missteps, Gamora was still a pretty badass character (Amanda Marcotte argues that she was actually the leader, aside from the not-being-a-white-dude bit).

Following a mom’s letter that went viral recently, Land’s End will start making science-themed shirts for girls (though other moms pointed out that they complained to the company at least as far back as 2010 about their gender-stereotyped designs, but that they didn’t care until they got bad publicity).

Study Break

• A study of 14-year-olds in Lisbon found that the students self-regulating their behavior to fit into their assigned gender roles had an adverse effect not only on their social interactions, but also on their physical and mental health. However, at the end of the study when the researcher told them that all of them had told her that they were unhappy, they started altering their behaviors in a positive direction.
• Take a look at some of the data that shows why the FDA needs to include more women and PoC in clinical trials.

It’s World Breastfeeding Week, which means boobs (and people’s opinions about them) have been all over the place. Olivia Wilde’s photo shoot for the September issue of Glamour was released, which included a shot of her nursing her naked baby while wearing a couture gown. Most of the reactions I’ve seen have been positive, though a few people have criticized her (or photographer Patrick Demarchelier) for using Otis as a prop, and some people just aren’t happy no matter what. I loved the excerpts I’ve seen from her interview (here, and more at the other links). Alanis Morissette also released a picture of her breastfeeding her son while on tour a couple years. And I freaking love that the Hamilton County Public Health Department posted a picture of a gorilla nursing her newborn at the Cincinnati Zoo on their Facebook page. D’awwwwww.

Of course, support and praise for breastfeeding moms should absolutely not equal shaming moms who use formula, whether it’s by choice or out of necessity. Breast may be “best,” but feeding the kid is better (and really, these days, there’s virtually no long-term difference so far as the health of the kid in most cases).

Book Stuff

• Wanda Gág’s 1935 picture book about a peasant who decides to swap places with his wife for the day so he can prove how “easy” she has it doing housework all day is a truly delightful work of proto-misandry.
• This sounds awesome—the Rampant Flamingo Book Club, featuring stories where the characters are non-white and/or queer, but that aren’t just about them existing or about overcoming bullying. Instead, they’ll just get to go on adventures like everyone else. (Check them out on Kickstarter; they only have a few days to go.)
• But definitely stay away from the book Bitsy Bear unless you want your kid to be completely paranoid about being abducted and for them to be afraid to basically have any sort of personality.
• A high school senior talks about what her required reading list taught her about women. (Mostly, that there’s apparently no need for high school kids to read about them at all.)
• Maya Rodale picks nine of her favorite feminist romance novels in honor of Read a Romance Month.
• The Guardian‘s five worst book covers of all time. (What in the hell did they do to Princess Buttercup?!?!?)

Recommended Reading

• 25 years after Seinfeld‘s Elaine, why don’t we have female TV characters who are confident in their sexual autonomy?
• On Kira Isabella’s “Quarterback,” a country song about date rape from the POV of the victim.
• 50 women spent an entire week documenting fat-shaming comments made to them or physical barriers they encountered such as tiny bus seats.
• Why working moms in Denmark have it so much easier than American moms.
• Comedian Daniel-Ryan Spaulding points out how ridiculous people sound when they complain about how female comedians aren’t funny.

• Stop period shaming!
• One woman talks about how taking a virginity pledge at age 10 totally screwed up her married sex life.
• 4 ignorant delusions people have about feminism.
• The problem with “dad feminism”; when men start waxing about becoming feminists after having daughters, it only points out that they didn’t really give a shit before that.
• “Janet Looks at 89 Dicks” is fucking hilarious. Oh, men and their dick pics. Bless you, Janet Silverman. (NSFW, though the only dick actually shown is from a statue.)