Perfect!

Why the hell do random men think we want to know whether they “approve” or not anyway? And it’s not just a shape/size issue. Some random asshole approached me in a store and asked me why I’m so pale. When he asked me why I don’t tan I told him the truth - (loudly enough for everyone nearby to hear) “because I have skin cancer.” Everybody glared at him like he was the biggest jerk and he ran away with his tail between his legs. Yeah, let me mutilate myself and get cancer so the dudes can approve of my body.

I think if I ever made a plaster cast of a body part to show men how I feel about their approval I’d make one of my upraised middle finger.

As long as you’re still a D-cup. I am short and skinny with no boobs. I am ‘too small’, in the words of a man I was merely trying to purchase carrots from.

I have just read ‘Backlash’ for the first time and I am ANGRY. Next, Dale Spender!

Besides, as others have suggested, removing the aggression isn’t really what we’re aiming for. What we want is to remove the attitude that they are entitled to act on their feelings of aggression, which has nothing to do with hormones.

I’ve come around to the idea that it probably won’t cure the most violent and deranged men out there. I still think it would put a kind of damper on sex criminals who are less violent to start with.

Once you started doing it as a matter of policy, no man would ever be convicted of rape again. In sum, a bad idea, the kind of idea a man comes up with, one that preserves maleness for those of us who rape women politely enough to escape prosecution.

It would do nothing to diminish male supremacy.

1. Castration of pets is done before puberty (or whatever you call it with animals); once they’ve started doing the unwanted behaviors, castrating them won’t stop the behaviors. Or so veterenarians (sp?) have told me. So, presumably, even rapist dogs wouldn’t be stopped from raping by being castrated.

2. I’ve read a few books by criminologists. While they do have to be taken with many grains of salt, I notice that they all talk about how sociopathic behavior always starts with “milder” antisocial behavior which is noticed but laughed off as being not serious. While not every groper turns into a rape-murderer, they say it should be taken as a warning of possible sociopathic behavior.

I’m also reminded of how here in New York, when they start cracking down on fare-beating in the subway, they catch a lot of people who are wanted for more serious crimes. Not every fare-beater is a serious criminal, but it’s much more likely than in the population at large.

As for apologizing after the fact: as I would say to my ex (if I thought she’d listen) — don’t apologize for it, just stop doing it!

Our society allows it.

I doubt any of these women want to deal patriarchy a death-blow with this self-esteem exercise. They are simply sharing their corporeal selves with each other and the world defiantly, which is part of a centuries old tradition of the disempowered, men and women alike. The “body principle” is a cornerstone of carnivalesque rebellion. Modern feminism is founded upon the revelation of shared oppression, and these women– while not fighting the very structure of our society as a whole– are refusing to maintain the charade of isolated deviance that is imposed on women through a mass mediated program of body-shame.

Cheers to the Embodiment Project! I hope to see more women seek empowerment through solidarity.

An ex-teacher who filmed up a girl’s skirt is let off with a suspended sentence. Apparently he’s ok because he’s a “low to medium” risk of reoffending (How the fuck is that calculated??), he’s SORRY (gee I’m sure the victim is pleased) and he didn’t sell it to anyone it was for his own private pervefest. Makes me fucking livid.

Of course the judge is a woman but I bet the boy judges are really pleased that she’s not some weirdy beardy feminist who thinks the production of child pornography is like, gee, um maybe a criminal offence worthy of gaol time?

Thank fuck some of us have thought it through, Twisty, I love your blog. :-)

Signed,
massively fucking angry Australian radical feminist