A Radical Profeminist: Friday, March 11, 2011

Friday, March 11, 2011

A Radical Profeminist's Important web pages and Recommended websites

This information used to appear along the right side of the blog, but I'm trying to "clean up" the space and have there be less info all on the main page or on any given blog page. So now you can track my favorite/important/recommended web pages here. Everything that used to run along the right side is below. The blog roll remains on the main page and on each blog page.

Important web pages to me and perhaps also to you

A Radical Profeminist's Recommending Reading List

REQUESTED READING for ANY "educated" class-privileged white man who wishes to make any comments to this blog (click on each as they are linked to more information about them):

"Everyday Male Chauvinism: Intimate Partner Violence Which Is Not Called Violence", by Luis Bonino, Péter Szil, with contribution from Gábor Kuszing, *here*.

Any or all books by Alice Walker, Andrea Dworkin, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Catharine A. MacKinnon, Derrick Jensen, Marilyn Frye, Patricia Hill Collins, Robert Jensen, and Sheila Jeffreys. Also, specifically:

Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, by Andrea Smith.

Letters From a War Zone, by Andrea Dworkin.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, by Audre Lorde

Yurugu: An African-centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior, by Marimba Ani.

About the latter book, one reviewer writes,

YURUGU removes the mask from the European facade and thereby reveals the inner working of global white [heterosexual male] supremacy: A system which functions to guarantee the control of Europe and [his] descendants (the few) over the majority of the world's peoples (the many)........Dr. Marimba Ani exposes the roles of both the academic and Christian establishment in proselytizing as "universal" that which is indeed culturally specific to Europe and which therefore functions in the interest of European dominance.

A Radical Profeminist's Favorite Quotes

Know who is playing the music before you dance. — Nikki Giovanni

There is difference and there is power. And who holds the power decides the meaning of the difference. — June Jordan

The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The Black mother within each of us - the poet - whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free. — Audre Lorde in Sister Outsider, "Poetry is Not A Luxury", page 38

[M]y vehicle was going to be truth: not a global, self-deluded truth, not a truth that only I knew and that I wanted other people to follow, but the truth that came from not lying. —Andrea Dworkin, Heartbreak, page 21

To me an important breakthrough, I felt, in my work and that of others was the call to use the term white supremacy, over racism because racism in and of itself did not really allow for a discourse of colonization and decolonization, the recognition of the internalized racism within people of color and it was always in a sense keeping things at the level at which whiteness and white people remained at the center of the discussion. — bell hooks, in Critical Foundations in Young Adult Literature (author: Antero Garcia), page 68

We live in chaos, uncertain about the possibility of building and sustaining community. The public figures who speak the most to us about a return to old-fashioned values...are most committed to maintaining systems of domination---racism, sexism, class exploitation, and imperialism. They promote a perverse version of freedom that makes it synonymous with materialism. [...] Forget about the fact that capitalism requires the existence of a mass underclass of surplus labor. Lying takes the form of mass media creating the myth that [the] feminist movement has completely transformed society, so much so that the politics of patriarchal power have been inverted and that men, particularly white men, just like emasculated black men, have become the victims of dominating women...When this collective cultural consumption of and attachment to misinformation couples with the layers of lying individuals do in their personal lives, our capacity to face reality is severely diminished as is our will to intervene and change unjust circumstances. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, page 27-29

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." — Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal. — Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1967)

I have come to believe, over and over again, that what is important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. — Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider, "The Transformation of Silence Into Language and Action", page 40 '

[T]hose who point out that women are being victimized are said to victimize women. Those who resist the reduction of women to sex are said to reduce women to sex. Subordinating women harms no one when pornographers do it, but when feminists see women being subordinated in pornography and say so, they are harming women. Words do nothing except when feminists use them. Go figure.' — Catharine A. MacKinnon, Women's Lives, Men's Laws, page 350

There’s nothing inevitable or neutral about heterosexuality. — Bev Jo

If I hated men, I would treat men the way that men treat women! — Beth Chamblin

Men who want to support women in our struggle for freedom and justice should understand that it is not terrifically important to us that they learn to cry; it is important to us that they stop the crimes of violence against us. — Andrea Dworkin, ‘The Rape Atrocity and the Boy Next Door’, speech at State University of New York, 1 March 1975. In Our Blood, chapter 4

They will kill me but they will not kill my voice, because it will be the voice of all Afghan women. You can cut the flower, but you cannot stop the coming of spring. — Malalai Joya

A.R.P. Glossary of Terms used on this blog

C.R.A.P. or CRAP: Corporate Racist Atrocious Patriarchy (I created that acronym in the summer of 2005 ECD, out of necessity)
CRAPitalism: Racist, patriarchal corporate economics. (Created here on 19 March 2010ECD, out of necessity)
"Dick-whipped" is a term I created quite recently (1 March 2010ECD it made its first public appearance) that seems to be missing from radical discourse generally. I need it to describe het men who are so afraid of being rejected and ostracized by other dominant het men, that they come out as antifeminist, as homophobic, as racist, as classist and pro-status quo. They use anti-queer, anti-woman, racist language and other behaviors to shore up their status and standing among other dick-whipped men. Dick-whipped men use terms like "p*ssy-whipped" to put down men who have the courage to break ranks with the delusional, terrified dick-whipped masses of misogynist men. Dick-whipped men want to be "a member" in good "standing" in the White Brotherhood more than anything else (see also, below, "The White Brotherhood")
ECD: Era of Christian Domination, in place of AD or CE (I'd have to check this blog for its first use--I created it here for a blogpost)
G.O.P.: Grandiose Oppressive P.R.I.C.K.s. Created on 30 March 2010 for the A.R.P. blog (see P.R.I.C.K., below)
Goddess: same as G-d, put in the feminine form, to remind people that G-d is not a man, and ought to be a represented, if personified at all, as a woman.
G-d: = [ ], All That Is (and Isn't), Being including the Non-dual Realm of Being, Truth Beyond Reason, What is Known and That Which Humans Cannot Know. That is one of several Jewish ways to refer in writing to this Being
HAM: Heterosexistly-Active Man (or Het-Acting Men)
HATERosexuality: a term I found a variation of in a comment by Patti, which I'm using here at A.R.P. to mean the form of sexual orientation and expression embraced by het men that promotes the hatred of effeminate and butch women, transgender and intergender people, intersex people, and gay men (first used by me on this blog on 5 August 2010 ECD)
Het = heterosexual, usually used here as an adjective for men
Homo Palien: The White Het Man. Created on 7 July out of necessity. See also, "Paliens".
Intergender: the reality of people who do experience themselves as being neither a girl or boy, or both girl and boy. For one person's discussion of this, see *here*. Some intergender people may consider it a form of being transgender; some may not
"Logical Phallusy": an argumentative principle employed most often by "educated" white men to make the case that patriarchal and racist atrocities are not as they appear, and that, in fact, according to "Rational Logic", white men have it just as bad as everyone else (created at A.R.P. on 6 August 2010 ECD)
"Lorde knows": used in place of Lord knows, referencing someone who is far more worthy of being considered a God and who may be a Goddess, Audre Lorde (I started writing this for the blog and in emails and chats, a few years ago. But I've seen others using it too. I'm not surprised; I'd think more people would)
Man-infestation: another term for "manifestation", noting that most realities are named by men in ways designed to invisibilise how male supremacy infects or infests both social experience and how it is understood. (I started using this in 2009, I believe.)
Misopedia: child-hating/child molesting, used in place of pedophilia (the love of children). This is not a term I made up; it's one that has existed for a long time but is not used because a term meaning "love of children" (pedophilia) is erroneously used instead; we don't call the rape of women an expression of "gynophilia" for a reason; the violation and assault of children, disproportionately female, is no different
Paliens: contraction of Pale Aliens, or the U.S. White Man and his white colonising, invading, mass murdering, pro-genocidal descendants (created by me on July 4, 2010 ECD)
P.I.M.P. or PIMP: Possessive Invasive Misogynist Profiteer (acronym created by me, out of necessity, on 31 December 2009 ECD; see also: W.I.M.P.)
P.O.P.E.: Patriarchal Oppressor Protecting Evil (created on 30 March 2010 for the A.R.P. blog)
P.P.P. or PPP: the Patriarchal Palian Paradigm (the pro-gynocidal, anti-Indigenist, white supremacist dominant culture and cult of war-worship (warship) and rape-rule, and wherein palien science or religion, not activist Indigenous women, have "the answers" to social-political problems (acronym created for and added to the A.R.P. Glossary on 8 July 2010 ECD)
P.R.I.C.K. or PRICK: Patriarchal, Racist, Ignorant, Condescending Know-it-all (a kind of white man: you know the dude) (Created by me a few years ago out of necessity to describe THAT manifestation of white guy)
Rape-rule: a key tenet and practice of the PPP (this term was created for and added to the A.R.P. Glossary on 8 July 2010 ECD)
Rapism: An ideological sexxxual centerpiece of white heterosexual male supremacy (aka the PPP), that holds that rape is and must be perpetually perpetuated and practiced by WHM against women, girls, and anyone deemed “feminine*” to the point it must both be denied as an atrocity and accepted as natural and inevitable. Pornographers market and pimps traffick in rapism's premises and practices.
*Consider how to be raped as a man, is to be socially “emasculated”. Consider how to be raped as a girl or woman is to be made into a "wh*re" in pornography, the compliant if lustful sexual female being, always there for men who are never there for her
Sexxx/Sexxxism: what the pornography industry mass produces. Also "the sexxxism industry" (terms I created for use in my writing and communications in the 1990s, out of necessity to describe pornographic/inhumane sexual violence presented as "sex")
Thealogian: a person who studies and practices the wisdom of the Goddesses, G-d, and G-dding, not the patriarchal kind (a term I created out of necessity to name those who refuse to worship or submit to any male god and the men who patriarchally proclaim there is such a Divine male being)
U.R.A., or The United Rapes of Amerikkka: a more fitting term for what the U.S.A. is and does. This term makes explicit something that pro-U.S.A. fanatics frequently deny publicly: that sexist (male supremacist) and racist (white supremacist) violence are the two most important practices in this country and that without both, the U.S.A. couldn't exist. (It was created by me a few years ago, probably for a blog post, to make point this unambiguously clear)"The White Brotherhood" is the often unspoken pact men make with each other to be racist, misogynistic, and homophobic in order to be pals, playmates, and power-brokers in the WHM supremacist societies
Warship: War-worship, a key tenet of the PPP (created for and added to the A.R.P. Glossary on 8 July 2010 ECD)
"White Christianity" is not a term that means the spiritual practice of the teachings of the non-white Jewish Jesus; nor does it mean "Christianity". It mean Western white het male supremacist corporate and corrupt Christianity
WHM = White Het Men
WHM Supremacy = white het male supremacy; the reigning and controlling destructive ideology impacting the globe, regulated and enforced primarily by wealthy white men in the West
W.I.M.P. or WIMP: Woman-Invading Misogynist Procurer (a term created by me on 4 January 2010, out of necessity; see also P.I.M.P.)

A.R.P. Glossary, Favorite Quotes, and Reading Recommendations

GLOSSARY:

C.R.A.P. or CRAP: Corporate Racist Atrocious Patriarchy (I created that acronym in the summer of 2005 ECD, out of necessity)
CRAPitalism: Racist, patriarchal corporate economics. (Created here on 19 March 2010ECD, out of necessity)
"Dick-whipped" is a term I created quite recently (1 March 2010ECD it made its first public appearance) that seems to be missing from radical discourse generally. I need it to describe het men who are so afraid of being rejected and ostracized by other dominant het men, that they come out as antifeminist, as homophobic, as racist, as classist and pro-status quo. They use anti-queer, anti-woman, racist language and other behaviors to shore up their status and standing among other dick-whipped men. Dick-whipped men use terms like "p*ssy-whipped" to put down men who have the courage to break ranks with the delusional, terrified dick-whipped masses of misogynist men. Dick-whipped men want to be "a member" in good "standing" in the White Brotherhood more than anything else (see also, below, "The White Brotherhood")
ECD: Era of Christian Domination, in place of AD or CE (I'd have to check this blog for its first use--I created it here for a blogpost)
G.O.P.: Grandiose Oppressive P.R.I.C.K.s. Created on 30 March 2010 for the A.R.P. blog (see P.R.I.C.K., below)
Goddess: same as G-d, put in the feminine form, to remind people that G-d is not a man, and ought to be a represented, if personified at all, as a woman.
G-d: = [ ], All That Is (and Isn't), Being including the Non-dual Realm of Being, Truth Beyond Reason, What is Known and That Which Humans Cannot Know. That is one of several Jewish ways to refer in writing to this Being
HATERosexuality: a term I found a variation of in a comment by Patti, which I'm using here at A.R.P. to mean the form of sexual orientation and expression embraced by het men that promotes the hatred of effeminate and butch women, transgender and intergender people, intersex people, and gay men (first used by me on this blog on 5 August 2010 ECD)
Het = heterosexual, usually used here as an adjective for men
Homo Palien: The White Het Man. Created on 7 July out of necessity. See also, "Paliens".
Intergender: the reality of people who do experience themselves as being neither a girl or boy, or both girl and boy. For one person's discussion of this, see *here*. Some intergender people may consider it a form of being transgender; some may not
"Logical Phallusy": an argumentative principle employed most often by "educated" white men to make the case that patriarchal and racist atrocities are not as they appear, and that, in fact, according to "Rational Logic", white men have it just as bad as everyone else (created at A.R.P. on 6 August 2010 ECD)
"Lorde knows": used in place of Lord knows, referencing someone who is far more worthy of being considered a God and who may be a Goddess, Audre Lorde (I started writing this for the blog and in emails and chats, a few years ago. But I've seen others using it too. I'm not surprised; I'd think more people would)
Man-infestation: another term for "manifestation", noting that most realities are named by men in ways designed to invisibilise how male supremacy infects or infests both social experience and how it is understood. (I started using this in 2009, I believe.)
Misopedia: child-hating/child molesting, used in place of pedophilia (the love of children). This is not a term I made up; it's one that has existed for a long time but is not used because a term meaning "love of children" (pedophilia) is erroneously used instead; we don't call the rape of women an expression of "gynophilia" for a reason; the violation and assault of children, disproportionately female, is no different
Paliens: contraction of Pale Aliens, or the U.S. White Man and his white colonising, invading, mass murdering, pro-genocidal descendants (created by me on July 4, 2010 ECD)
P.I.M.P. or PIMP: Possessive Invasive Misogynist Profiteer (acronym created by me, out of necessity, on 31 December 2009 ECD; see also: W.I.M.P.)
P.O.P.E.: Patriarchal Oppressor Protecting Evil (created on 30 March 2010 for the A.R.P. blog)
P.P.P. or PPP: the Patriarchal Palian Paradigm (the pro-gynocidal, anti-Indigenist, white supremacist dominant culture and cult of war-worship (warship) and rape-rule, and wherein palien science or religion, not activist Indigenous women, have "the answers" to social-political problems (acronym created for and added to the A.R.P. Glossary on 8 July 2010 ECD)
P.R.I.C.K. or PRICK: Patriarchal, Racist, Ignorant, Condescending Know-it-all (a kind of white man: you know the dude) (Created by me a few years ago out of necessity to describe THAT manifestation of white guy)
Rape-rule: a key tenet and practice of the PPP (this term was created for and added to the A.R.P. Glossary on 8 July 2010 ECD)
Rapism: An ideological sexxxual centerpiece of white heterosexual male supremacy (aka the PPP), that holds that rape is and must be perpetually perpetuated and practiced by WHM against women, girls, and anyone deemed “feminine*” to the point it must both be denied as an atrocity and accepted as natural and inevitable. Pornographers market and pimps traffick in rapism's premises and practices.
*Consider how to be raped as a man, is to be socially “emasculated”. Consider how to be raped as a girl or woman is to be made into a "wh*re" in pornography, the compliant if lustful sexual female being, always there for men who are never there for her
Sexxx/Sexxxism: what the pornography industry mass produces. Also "the sexxxism industry" (terms I created for use in my writing and communications in the 1990s, out of necessity to describe pornographic/inhumane sexual violence presented as "sex")
Thealogian: a person who studies and practices the wisdom of the Goddesses, G-d, and G-dding, not the patriarchal kind (a term I created out of necessity to name those who refuse to worship or submit to any male god and the men who patriarchally proclaim there is such a Divine male being)

U.R.A., or The United Rapes of Amerikkka: a more fitting term for what the U.S.A. is and does. This term makes explicit something that pro-U.S.A. fanatics frequently deny publicly: that sexist (male supremacist) and racist (white supremacist) violence are the two most important practices in this country and that without both, the U.S.A. couldn't exist. (It was created by me a few years ago, probably for a blog post, to make point this unambiguously clear)"The White Brotherhood" is the often unspoken pact men make with each other to be racist, misogynistic, and homophobic in order to be pals, playmates, and power-brokers in the WHM supremacist societies
Warship: War-worship, a key tenet of the PPP (created for and added to the A.R.P. Glossary on 8 July 2010 ECD)
"White Christianity" is not a term that means the spiritual practice of the teachings of the non-white Jewish Jesus; nor does it mean "Christianity". It mean Western white het male supremacist corporate and corrupt Christianity
WHM = White Het Men
WHM Supremacy = white het male supremacy; the reigning and controlling destructive ideology impacting the globe, regulated and enforced primarily by wealthy white men in the West
W.I.M.P. or WIMP: Woman-Invading Misogynist Procurer (a term created by me on 4 January 2010, out of necessity; see also P.I.M.P.)

KEY QUOTES THAT ADDRESS THE CONCERNS AND INFORM THE PERSPECTIVES OF THIS BLOG:
Know who is playing the music before you dance. -- Nikki Giovanni

There is difference and there is power. And who holds the power decides the meaning of the difference. -- June Jordan

The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The Black mother within each of us - the poet - whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free. -- Audre Lorde in Sister Outsider, "Poetry is Not A Luxury", page 38

[M]y vehicle was going to be truth: not a global, self-deluded truth, not a truth that only I knew and that I wanted other people to follow, but the truth that came from not lying. -- Andrea Dworkin, Heartbreak, page 21

We live in chaos, uncertain about the possibility of building and sustaining community. The public figures who speak the most to us about a return to old-fashioned values...are most committed to maintaining systems of domination---racism, sexism, class exploitation, and imperialism. They promote a perverse version of freedom that makes it synonymous with materialism. [...]

Forget about the fact that capitalism requires the existence of a mass underclass of surplus labor. Lying takes the form of mass media creating the myth that [the] feminist movement has completely transformed society, so much so that the politics of patriarchal power have been inverted and that men, particularly white men, just like emasculated black men, have become the victims of dominating women...When this collective cultural consumption of and attachment to misinformation couples with the layers of lying individuals do in their personal lives, our capacity to face reality is severely diminished as is our will to intervene and change unjust circumstances. -- bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, p. 27-29

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." -- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal.-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1967)

I have come to believe, over and over again, that what is important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. -- Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider, "The Transformation of Silence Into Language and Action", p. 40

'[T]hose who point out that women are being victimized are said to victimize women. Those who resist the reduction of women to sex are said to reduce women to sex. Subordinating women harms no one when pornographers do it, but when feminists see women being subordinated in pornography and say so, they are harming women. Words do nothing except when feminists use them. Go figure.' -- Catharine A. MacKinnon, Women's Lives, Men's Laws, page 350.

If I hated men, I would treat men the way that men treat women! -- Beth Chamblin

Men who want to support women in our struggle for freedom and justice should understand that it is not terrifically important to us that they learn to cry; it is important to us that they stop the crimes of violence against us. -- Andrea Dworkin, ‘The Rape Atrocity and the Boy Next Door’, speech at State University of New York, 1 March 1975. In Our Blood, chapter 4 (1976)

They will kill me but they will not kill my voice, because it will be the voice of all Afghan women. You can cut the flower, but you cannot stop the coming of spring. -- Malalai Joya
___________

REQUESTED READING for ANY "educated" class-privileged white man who wishes to make any comments to this blog (click on each as they are linked to more information about them):

"Everyday Male Chauvinism: Intimate Partner Violence Which Is Not Called Violence", by Luis Bonino, Péter Szil, with contribution from Gábor Kuszing, *here*.

Any or all books by Alice Walker, Andrea Dworkin, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Catharine A. MacKinnon, Derrick Jensen, Marilyn Frye, Patricia Hill Collins, Robert Jensen, and Sheila Jeffreys. Also, specifically:

Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, by Andrea Smith.

Letters From a War Zone, by Andrea Dworkin.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, by Audre Lorde
Yurugu: An African-centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior, by Marimba Ani.

About the latter book, one reviewer writes,

YURUGU removes the mask from the European facade and thereby reveals the inner working of global white [heterosexual male] supremacy: A system which functions to guarantee the control of Europe and [his] descendants (the few) over the majority of the world's peoples (the many)........Dr. Marimba Ani exposes the roles of both the academic and Christian establishment in proselytizing as "universal" that which is indeed culturally specific to Europe and which therefore functions in the interest of European dominance.

A bit about me

Updated and revised on 16 March 2016.

I am gay, male, First World, and of Ashkenazi Jewish and other European heritage.

I am pro-Indigenist. Anti-colonial white supremacy. Anti-heteropatriarchal.

Contrary to MRA Internet rumors, I don't support any form of genocide, including against any percent of the male population. I don't hate men (or women, intersex, or transsex people). I am not anti-sex; I'm anti-sexism. I'm not anti-male; I'm against male supremacy. I am also not pro-sex in the white and Liberal Queer sense. I'm not supportive of the existence of the the sex trade or sex industries, or any form of coerced or slave labor.

I don't have sexual or romantic relationships with anyone. My gender is anti-male supremacy. My sex is "No". I am pro-Eroticism in this sense: http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/08/uses-of-erotic-erotic-as-power-classic.html

I view political activism as spiritual work. I believe in the fusion of rage and compassion with responsible action, hopefully organised with other activists to achieve more joy, healing, creativity, and peace on Earth. I am appropriately furious about systemic injustice and gross inhumanity. Outrage isn't a form of hatred: it is a form of love. I love humanity and hope we can collectively work to become more compassionate and empathic, including by living sustainably with the Earth.

Cross Post from dedgurlcingztheblooze: who will socially care about the 11 year-old girl who was group-raped in Cleveland, Texas?

Sources for this audio post are here:

http://dedgurlcingztheblooze.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/i-wasnt-going-to-talk-about-this/

http://blip.tv/file/4872727

See also this post from What About Our Daughters *here*.

Thank you to The Blogmother, and to dedgurlcingztheblooze.
Here are some of my own thoughts for right now:

My prayers are with that girl. And all the girls the world over being group-raped and raped individually by men and boys, disproportionately Black, Brown, and Indigenous. The society must crumble, as dedgurl says in the audio blog.

Punishing a few perpetrators of atrocity pretends rape would end of only we sent all the rapists to jail. It wouldn't--especially in jail. And also the class-privileged white men who travel the world to rape girls won't ever get put in jail so how does killing or locking up only Black and Brown men solve the rape problem? It may make some individual survivors feel safer to know their assaulter-terrorist-violator is in prison. And I'm not opposed to rapers of children or of women going to prison--let anyone who violates a girl or woman sexually or physically be sent there for the rest of his life, as far as I'm concerned. At least she'll be safer, but only from him. Not by the other male relatives, the other procurers, the other date-rapists, the other boyfriends, the other men wanting a little action.

Most rapes of girls, after all, are committed by their own fathers and step-fathers and other male relatives. And by "sex (read: rape) tourists", procurers, pimps, traffickers, and slavers. None of those men will get put in jail, folks. Group-rape is not the usual way girls and women are raped, even while it is disgustingly, reprehensibly, outrageously common.

So what are we going to do about all that? The political approach is not to pretend justice is served by locking up a few predators. Girls and women remain unsafe no matter how many poor men go to jail. Rape is a reality because in this society, white het men want it to be one. The political approach that has a spiritual center, a humane core, is to radically transform society into an non-predatory, non-misopedic, non-misogynist one where girls and women are not targeted from birth to death for rape and other violations and degradations.

Wishing the People of Japan Safety and Wellness as their Biggest Earthquake Hits (8.9 quake with tsunami washing ashore in Northeast Japan)

map of Japan and surrounding area is from here

With special prayers for friends and family there.

What follows is from the New York Times. Please click on title below to link back.

Huge Earthquake Triggers Tsunami Off Japan’s Coast

By KEVIN DREW
Published: March 11, 2011

A tsunami hit the coast of northeast Japan on Friday in the aftermath of an 8.9 magnitude earthquake about 80 miles offshore. Television images showed waves of more than 12 feet roaring inland. CNN reported that air and land transportation was severely disrupted.

Enlarge This Image

Kyodo News, via Associated Press
An area flooded by the tsunami in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture in Japan, after an earthquake struck off the northeastern coast.
Related
Times Topic: Tidal Waves and Tsunamis

Enlarge This Image

NHK, via Reuters TV
A tsunami carried boats across waters in Kamaishi city port in this still image taken from video footage.
Enlarge This Image

NHK, via Associated Press
Houses were washed away by tsunami in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture in eastern Japan, after Japan was struck by a magnitude 8.9 earthquake off the northeastern coast.

There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries but the force of the waves washed away cars on coastal roads and crashed into buildings along the shore, The Associate Press reported.

A second major earthquake of 7.4 magnitude was reported as aftershocks shook the region.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake was magnitude 8.9, which the agency labeled a “mega” quake. The tremor occurred at about 230 miles northeast of Tokyo and at a depth of about 15 miles.

The quake occurred at 2:46 p.m. Tokyo time and its location was off Honshu, Japan’s most populous island.

A tsunami warning was in effect for Japan, Russia, Marcus Island and the Northern Marianas, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. Japan’s meteorological agency warned that a tsunami as high as 20 feet could strike the coast near Miyagi prefecture, closest to the epicenter.

The Associated Press reported that a large ship swept away by the tsunami rammed directly into a breakwater in Kesennuma city in Miyagi prefecture, according to footage on public broadcaster NHK.

Japanese television showed major tsunami damage in northern Japan. Video footage also showed buildings on fire in the Odaiba district of Tokyo, The Associated Press reported.

“It just seemed to go on and on,” Katherine Wallace told the BBC, who was in an office building in Tokyo, said of the quake tremor.