When Women Refuse
Posted by Michelle Moquin on May 31st, 2014
Good morning!
To those who say, “Oh my god, I had no idea,” here’s more proof that the murdering rampage that Elliot Rodgers went on is no isolated incidence, but something that is very common.
From Think Progress.
Chilling New Website Documents What Happens To Women Who Reject Men’s Sexual Advances
A woman attacked with acid. A teenager stabbed to death. A woman raped and beaten. Women smashed in the head with bowling balls and glass bottles.
Those are real life examples of violence that women have experienced after they rejected the sexual advances of men — when they refused to flirt with them, dance with them, go on a date with them, or have sex with them — being collected by a new Tumblr page called “When Women Refuse.” The recent mass shooting in Santa Barbara, which was perpetrated by a young man who wanted to punish the women who weren’t attracted to him, is the latest example of a tragedy that fits this profile.
“We still don’t view gender based violence as a large cultural issue — we tend to think of these as isolated incidences,” Deanna Zandt, the co-founder of the digital strategy group Lux Digital and the feminist activist who started the Tumblr, explained in an interview. “We still don’t view it as a larger problem within rape culture.”
After news broke about this weekend’s shooting rampage, Zandt said that many of the men in her social networks were quick to assume that the perpetrator, Elliot Rodger, represents an extreme outlier. She wanted to do something to help people realize that what happened in Santa Barbara is actually all too common, thanks to our culture of violence and misogyny against women. So when she noticed the writer Kate Harding collecting similar news stories on her Facebook page, Zandt decided to house them on a public site, and “When Women Refuse” was born.
The site took off. Twitter users were quick to share it under the hashtag #YesAllWomen, which has emerged as a space for women to share their own personal experiences with violence and misogyny in the aftermath of the shooting.
“There’s been a really positive reaction from both men and women,” Zandt said. “I think it’s been really eye opening for many people. The most common response has been — ‘oh my god, I had no idea.’ ”
Thanks to the online tools that are now available to feminist activists, social media users are increasingly taking the opportunity to drive conversations about victim-blaming and gender-based violence. Earlier this year, feminists used Twitter to amplify women’s experiences with rape culture — a concept that was once relegated to the feminist blogosphere, but that has recently gained recognition in more mainstream circles. Now, the coverage around the Santa Barbara shooting has put a spotlight on the “Pick Up Artist” (PUA) community, which has a long history of treating women like objects that men are entitled to.
“The fact that this conversation is happening now is a huge indicator of the structural connectivity work that online feminists have been doing for years,” Zandt noted. “We’re in a different place than we were five years ago… We’re creating a space for these discussions.”
*****
Readers: I posted this write because as I said, stories need to be told and heard so that we women will shout “Enough!” And come together in support of each other.
Zandt noted that “We’re in a different place than we were five years ago… We’re creating a space for these discussions.” I realize her intentions are good….Although I HOPE that she is creating a space for more than discussion, because we need a clarion call to action, to ALL women to “woman up!” – Thanks Janet!
I HOPE to hear from more of all you Wonderful Women Of The World. Got to go….Blog me. Lots of LOVE to all of you.
Peace out.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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May 31st, 2014 at 10:13 am
I’m sick of women like Zandt with their explanations of why men get to commit violence against women or saying we “will over come.”
Black people didn’t “over come” until they stopped taking our bullshit. When they put the fear of god into white men, they started making strides towards equality.
White men will never give an inch of equality away unless they fear the consequences for not doing it.
You have explained it well Michelle. We as women need to act in sufficient enough numbers to force men to accept the justice of their acts of violence towards women.
And we need to make that justice proportion to the crime.
May 31st, 2014 at 10:16 am
Why are we as women accepting this unbearable situation? It maybe because of women like Zandt to tell us to be patient.
We used to tell that to the minorities. Be patient you will one day get the same rights as us, just not today.
We as women don’t need to riot to get our rights, we need to follow your advice Michelle and vote the bastards out.
May 31st, 2014 at 10:21 am
I agree with you Michelle, this is a non issue if women go to the polls and vote out men who propound explanations of why men act violently rather than pass stiff laws that punish such behavior.
They should be just as vigilant and excoriate women who postulate similar excuses for male violence against women.
You couldn’t be more clear. It is a solution that women have in their control. If they don’t use it, they certainly can’t expect men to stop doing the thing they continue to get rewarded for doing.
May 31st, 2014 at 1:33 pm
Voting them out and women in works.
Btw, I wasn’t giving lip service to why they do it and letting anyone off the hook, though men will NEVER freaking stop violence or general misogyny until women do the stopping. The psychological terms I was referring to was more along the lines of the woman who allows herself to be hit on and be flattered by her BFF’s hubby flirting behavior, I’ve witnessed that and he was a Ahole but she bought it, and my question is – why? I would tell the fucker off and report back to my friend, hmmmm wait I did do that when it occurred with a friend and she got fucking pissed at me for ‘flirting with him’ (nope. Not even remotely) and them she was further pissed that I told her, when another friend told me the same thing happened a year later and asked should she tell her, I said do it at your own risk it certainly made our friendship uncomfortable fr awhile…so I get why the thinly veiled comments were aimed at my remark about psychology/testosterone etc…but in our just us system they’re busy putting people away fr pot and letting rapists and pediphiled go free, I don’t think rapists will get put away bc of this write. This has been card out in the media long before yesterday.
And, well, I think it may be vigilant time ala Alycedale (and using a gun) yourself when need be.
Anyway, hope you all have a great weekend and I’m so used to being either misunderstood or reading thinly veiled comments, it really doesn’t matter anymore, you want a solution start calling out the idiots that say misogynistic bs to you or in general and be prepared as Alycedale. Disturbed men aren’t going to stop anytime soon so train your daughters to be on guard for bad boy behavior as well. Maybe if enough males are called out and taken out it’ll get their attention…
Luv, Zen Lill
May 31st, 2014 at 2:09 pm
& you could say my friend was an ass or lots of other things but she’s actually quite smart, she just wasn’t ready to make a move she had kids to raise so often women will react that way bc they don’t want to shake up the boat. Right or wrong it’s a fact. & she’s definitely not alone in behaving that way.
Also, women with low self esteem and horrible boundaries are out there, lots of them, I try to educate as I meet with clients, teens but it isn’t as easy or clear cut as it all sounds…
For sure punishment fr men who are violent in any way…& dudes love that YouTube video where a man gets pushed around by a woman in public and other women laugh at her behavior, so stupid and unrealistic I can’t even believe it’s still up…
-ZL
May 31st, 2014 at 5:11 pm
Awful stories on that womenwhorefuse site, #yesallwomen has some astute commenters, good links, thank you!
May 31st, 2014 at 5:31 pm
Fek I decided to research #yesallwomen and the creator had had so many death and rape threats it’s now #EachEveryWoman (& what does this tell you about the horrific nature of a LOT of men – while the ‘good’ ones stand by and say and do nothing, how’s that good?) – ugh. So scary sad.
June 1st, 2014 at 8:00 am
“The psychological terms I was referring to was more along the lines of the woman who allows herself to be hit on and be flattered by her BFF’s hubby flirting behavior”
Zen Lill, most of us have witnessed such events. Michelle mentioned it also. Until women stop finding this attractive in men, they will continue to do it.
What I don’t understand is why the woman doesn’t realize that if he does that to a woman he has been with what makes her think he want do it to her.
June 1st, 2014 at 8:09 am
Zen Lill, my sister got freaking hysterical when I told her about her boyfriend hitting on me. She blamed me and stopped speaking to me for years.
She married the creep and turned the family against me. 9 years and four kids later, she comes home and discovers him in bed with the baby sitter, and I do mean baby (15).
She called the kid a whore and threw her out, but because she refused to pay the kid when her family asked her why she told they called the police and the creep i now doing time for statutory rape.
The kicker is that at the trial other members of the family testified that he had made passes at them some he had fucked when they were minors.
My sister, she’s visiting the asshole in prison.
June 1st, 2014 at 8:12 am
Zen Lill, so true my girlfriend just married a creep who cheated on his wife of 15 years with her for 4. She knew he was married and didn’t care.
I try to stay away because I feel that if my husband played her she would be the kind of woman who would find it flattering and she wouldn’t tell me.
June 1st, 2014 at 8:15 am
” Maybe if enough males are called out and taken out it’ll get their attention…”
Zen Lill, I agree. That is the only way most of those creeps will learn.
June 1st, 2014 at 8:21 am
she just wasn’t ready to make a move she had kids to raise so often women will react that way bc they don’t want to shake up the boat. Right or wrong it’s a fact. & she’s definitely not alone in behaving that way.
Zen Lill, I am one of those. I have had beer thrown at me. I have been kicked in the abdomen, while I was pregnant. I have been slapped, beaten, kicked and thrown, picked up and thrown down again.
But I stayed, because we had three small kids, I was afraid to be alone trying to take care of them.
June 1st, 2014 at 8:25 am
Men support each other when they abuse women. They do it by being silent or by acting out in the defense of me.
They accuse women of playing the sex card. It is the same shit white men use when they abuse the minorities, OTWs in this country.
Michelle is so right when she says we as women have to take this on our on shoulders and defend each other.
June 1st, 2014 at 8:28 am
Michelle, being an outsider looking in on American women, I find it strange that it is the one industrialized country that has not elected a woman as its political leader.
I agree with Zen Lill the psychology that has fucked up their minds must be powerful.
June 1st, 2014 at 8:32 am
Michelle, I follow your lead. I have begun teaching my girls (2) to be on alert for men who abuse women. And I am actively working to defuse some of the shit my husband has be saying to my sons (3).
I want them to learn that they should never abuse women. My husband says I am trying to make fags out of them. He is an asshole in this department.
I love him because he has never disrespected me. But you are correct Michelle, we have to be diligent about what goes into the minds of our boys about how to treat females.
June 1st, 2014 at 8:36 am
My husband threatens me when I refuse to do something he tells me to do. He tells me to get an absentee ballot so he can mark it off. Then he forces me to sign it and take it in.
I throw it away when I am inside city hall. Reading your write has convinced me that is not enough. From now on, I will find a way to go to the polls and vote so that my thrown away ballot is not wasted.
Since he is republican. I will vote exclusive republican.
June 1st, 2014 at 8:42 am
Michelle, and Zen Lill, I too made excuses when my husband beat on me. I’d think that he was a good man, and that I just made him mad.
Now I know that he had a right to get angry but that didn’t give him the right to lay his hands on me.
June 1st, 2014 at 8:45 am
I was one of those women who stayed in my marriage. I had two babies and I was uneducated for the jobs out there so I felt trapped and I was unable to leave until they left home.
I had to secretly abort any other kids I had because I didn’t want to stay trapped. I am in a home for battered women and learning the skills I need to find a job.
It is hard for women out there, very hard.
June 1st, 2014 at 8:52 am
My mother was abused so often in front of us that that is all I remember about my childhood. I am 41 years old. She died from a ruptured spleen when I was 29. My father never saw the inside of a jail.
My two brothers 37 and 39 hate him. He tells us that what happened between our mother and him was between a husband and a wife and we should just be a family.
My brothers are angry with me because I still communicate with him. I don’t hate him, feel sorry for him. To this day I don’t trust men. I date them but I wouldn’t marry one.
June 1st, 2014 at 8:55 am
Molly#18, It was hard out there for OTWs when we were getting out asses beat by white America, but we stood up to resist.
If white women don’t stand up with us we can’t win this fight. I don’t know your race but that is a fact.
June 1st, 2014 at 9:00 am
Zen Lill the thing I agree with most about your posts is the one that says we need more Alycedales.
When women start to kill the bastards they will take notice. My cousin read a post I sent her from Alycedale went out and bought a gun. She also bought a hidden camera and when he threaten her she went into the room where the tape and the gun was.
He started hitting her as usual and she grabbed her gun and put all 7 bullets into him. He will not be hitting any more women ever again.
June 1st, 2014 at 9:14 am
This is my first time writing in. I usually read for Howie because I have been fascinated with UFOs since my childhood. I have been in therapy for years because I believed I had been taken from my bed room and raped by aliens.
Three years ago my baby sister told me about an episode in which our father came into her bedroom and took her downstairs to the guest room and raped her. She was 13. I was 12 when he did it to me.
He was always abusing mother and us by beating us and swearing at us all the time. He was the deacon at out church and everyone thought he was the ideal father figure.
Mother is still in denial about the bastard. My sister refuses to have anything to do with her. I try to support her because I like Zen Lill believe there are more colors to this than we admit.
Sure I wish she had stopped the bastard from raping us. I agree with my sister that she must have known that he was getting up in the night and taking us to the guest room to rape us.
But I love her as much as my sister despises her. I don’t feel that she had the strength to defend us. I talked my sister out of not prosecuting my father because it would mean mother would probably go to jail also as my sister intended to tell that he guest room is under their bedroom and she must have heard our screams because it hurt.
She agreed but says she will never allow either of them near her or her family. My husband is a good man. He never abuses me and is very supportive although he agrees with my sister and says we should go to the police.
He refuses to allow my father near out kids and suggests that I do the same for my mother but I stand up for myself and allow my mother to visit our children. Am I wrong?
June 1st, 2014 at 9:18 am
I am a teacher at a private school. The boys here think nothing of tormenting girls. When I chastise them their mothers call the principal and complain about me.
Women who support their male sons who abuse girls are a sick bunch. Michelle, I hope your column can help because some mothers are as much to blame for teenage male behavior as their fathers are.
June 1st, 2014 at 9:19 am
Michelle, my dream was to escape to America to get away from the abuse we women suffer from russian men on a daily basis. I guess I was just dreaming about a utopia that doesn’t exist.
June 1st, 2014 at 9:32 am
Most men see violence as a solution to a problem as a good thing. And since they are bigger than women, they see nothing wrong with using their physical advantage to solve their differences with females.
I like Alyedales concept that the colt is the equalizer in the physical department. I think every woman should get a gun and learn how to use it.
Whether or not she is in a stand your grown state doesn’t matter, she still needs a means to equalize the threat of violence towards her.
June 1st, 2014 at 9:35 am
Michelle your manifesto was perfect and what every female needs to read. It should be required reading as soon as a female can read and every year thereafter until this situation changes.
June 1st, 2014 at 9:37 am
I am so tired of being hit on at work. The atmosphere in my office is oppressive to all the women here. We take it because the wages and benefits are so good.
Something in this country has to change. I understand both Michelle and Zen Lill’s points of view. The bottom line is we must change the legal system that is firmly in the hands of men.
June 1st, 2014 at 10:55 am
Viv is lost. He is wearing a CYYANN Suit so he is protected while in Human form, for about two weeks.
To the Cyborg and Computers searching for him I suggest finding the Video Tape he was viewing just before he took off. This will help you find him.
I know he will be found.
HOWIE