The Women

Dale Spender

1943 - 2023

Feminism has fought no wars. It has killed no opponents. It has set up no concentration camps, starved no enemies, practiced no cruelties. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions, for safety in the streets, for child care, for social welfare, for rape crisis centres, women's refuges, reforms in the law. If someone says, "Oh, I'm not a feminist", I ask, "Why? What's your problem?"

Overheard

If it was actually possible for women to sleep their way to the top, women would be running the whole goddamned show by now - you dumbass.

The far more likely reality is that men have been engaging in sexual extortion, withholding the rewards and promotions women have earned in order to get sex.

Look At Yourself

• When a young girl is raped, and you defend the rapist.
• When a guy shoots and kills a woman on the street, and you defend the shooter.
• When a guy is being totally disrespectful of the women around him, and you say nothing.

• Your cynicism doesn't make you interesting.
• Your smug dismissal of anything that moves normal people to feel sorrow doesn't make you manly.
• Your support for somebody who gets a kick out of pushing people around sure as fuck doesn't make you strong.

Women see and hear your reactions to the shitty things going on all around us - especially when you cheer it on, or you just shrug it off with some stupid epithet that you think is cute.

You're not being clear-eyed and pragmatic - you're being an asshole.

So the "crisis of male loneliness" isn't because there's a problem with women - it's because women are very much aware of what a big fuckin' jerk you are.

Leopards Are Eating His Face

"You need a man's protection from the monsters. And never mind that men have pretty much always been the monsters you need protection from. But hey - you think it was bad before? You ain't seen nuthin' yet, sister."

Dude - the Plutocrats are the ones beating you down. It's the billionaire parasites and their coin-operated politicians.

This is not Men vs Women, any more than it's Red vs Blue, or White vs Brown, or Libs vs MAGA. If you'd figure that out, and stand up against it, you'd find plenty of women fighting at your side. Because women have been fighting that battle for millennia, and they've got plenty to teach us. So shut the fuck up and learn, dumbass.

Overheard

Women don't owe the world babies.

They don't owe men babies.

And they don't owe anyone

an explanation for any of it.

Maybe we could all just

mind our own fuckin' business.

The Supreme Strength In Perceived Weakness

Nobody's coming to save you with a flag and a casserole.

Today's Monte

Women's standing in just about any segment of any society is a pretty good barometer of the overall health of that society.

And if my goal is to subjugate people in general, why not enlist half the population to help subjugate the other half?

Divide-n-Conquer works wonders, and there are so many different ways to apply it.

Today's Today

Happy International Women's Day

Questioning

I've said (on more than a few occasions), "Women will save us - all we have to do is stay the fuck outa their way and let 'em do it".

My intention was to acknowledge women's strength and capabilities. But apparently, in some quarters, it's not welcomed as any kind of encouragement, and has garnered some clapback.

So I'm having to reassess and recalibrate.

I didn't mean to put anything extra on your shoulders, ladies. You owe me exactly nothing.

Like I said, I've been hearing quite a bit about this. And though it's not aimed directly at me, I take their meaning. So I'm sorry. I'll try to be more mindful, and do better.

Today's Belle

In 2008 they told McCain that if he was more than 5 points underwater with women, he was gonna lose. He was, and he did.

And I'll say it again:

Women will save us. All we have to do is stay the fuck outa their way and let 'em do it.

Go get 'em, ladies.

I'll hold your stuff

while you fuck 'em up.

I'm right behind you,

and I'll be here when you're done.

A Poem

... by Danielle Coffyn

If Adam Picked The Apple

There would be a parade,

a celebration,

a holiday to commemorate

the day he sought enlightenment.

We would not speak of temptation

by the devil, rather,

we would laud Adam's curiosity,

his desire for adventure

and knowing.

We would feast

on apple-inspired fare -

tortes, chutneys, pancakes, pies.

There would be plays and songs

reenacting his courage.

But it was Eve who grew bored,

weary of her captivity in Eden.

And a woman's desire

for freedom is rarely a cause

for celebration.

She's Gonna Need It

Women Will Save Us

and I'll be

standing right

behind them

holding their stuff

while they fuck you up. 

Dear Mr Butker

The Yankee Farm Wife would like a word

Mic Drop, Bitch

... like 3 or 4 times.

Get Wise

I wasn't fully aware of it back then, but I do remember the time when women were all but invisible outside the confines of their marriage, and their kids, and managing their households.

PoliticsByTabitha

Pushback

Mahsa Amini at 22 years old

Yeah - she's like really dangerous,

what with her insistence on

making her own decisions and all.

Assholes

People will be free. Even if we vote ourselves into bondage, there's always a kernel of dissent - a small group who won't knuckle under - who won't be fooled, and who will eventually bring the others around.

When the size of that kernel is potentially half of your population, you'd best be paying attention.

I'll say it again: Women will save us from ourselves - if we can figure out how to get the fuck outa their way.

The story of Iran’s Mahsa Amini uprising told through its most iconic images

It was a movement that began with the death of a young Iranian woman from a small Kurdish town. Over the next year, it spread on social media and captured the attention of the world.

This is the story of Iran’s uprising through its most memorable images.

1 Mahsa Amini’s death

On Sept. 13, 2022, Mahsa Amini was visiting her brother in Tehran just days before her 23rd birthday when she was stopped and taken away by the country’s infamous “morality police,” for allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code for women.

View this post on Instagram

Within hours, Amini lay in a coma in a hospital bed, with Iranian police claiming that she had suffered a heart attack. Her family said she was beaten. The image of her shared on social media shook the country.

Three days later, she died.

2 Removing the headscarf

The protests began on Sept. 16, the day Amini died, with crowds gathering outside the Tehran hospital where she spent her final days.

As she was laid to rest in her hometown of Saqqez the following day, women took off their headscarves in protest. They chanted “woman, life, freedom” — a slogan that would soon be heard across the country.

پرچم مازنی‌ها ✌️👏
ساری، ۲۹ شهریور؛ مراسم روسری‌سوزان!#مهسا_امینی #مهساامینی pic.twitter.com/b2sAPJGIyV

— Pouria Zeraati (@pouriazeraati) September 20, 2022

translated:
Mazniha's flag ✌️👏
in Sari, 29 September; Burning scarf ceremony!
#Mehsa_Amini #MehsaAmini 

Some women took off their headscarves, waving them in the air or setting them on fire. Others cut their hair in public, openly defying the morality police.

کرمان، میدان آزادی#مهسا_امینی pic.twitter.com/wk535lhtr9

— Kayhan (@cosmos196196) September 20, 2022

translated:
Kerman, Azadi Square

3 Targeting images of Khamenei

Images of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are everywhere in Iran, a symbol of his unquestioned authority.

As anger rose, protesters tore down posters and burned billboards featuring his face. “Death to Khamenei” became a rallying cry.

Burning Khamenei's billboard in Yazd with a Molotov cocktail. One way to show how much he is hated inside Iran.
#MahsaAmini #مهسا_امینی #IranRevoIution pic.twitter.com/0Kv85GIo4k

— Omid Memarian (@Omid_M) November 8, 2022

4 Rising up in universities

Universities became hubs of protest as young people became leaders of the movement. Campuses were raided by security forces. The government cut off the internet. Some students were detained or forced to abandon their studies.

When Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, visited one university in an attempt to calm protests, he was greeted by angry students yelling “get lost.”

Students at Al-Zahra University—an all female uni in Iran—shout in protest upon President Ebrahim Raisi’s visit:

“Death to the oppressor, whether it is a king or a [supreme] leader”pic.twitter.com/PyoCPQIgr8

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) October 8, 2022

In one clip, a group of young women can be seen singing the song “Baraye,” which became an anthem giving voice to protesters’ grievances and received a Grammy award for Best Song for Social Change.

5 Remembering Amini

In late October thousands of people made their way to Amini’s grave to mark the 40th day after her death — known as a “chehellom,” an especially important moment in the Iranian Shiite funerary tradition.

A photo of a young woman standing on a car without a headscarf became an iconic image.

6 Taking the protest to sports

Acts of protest weren’t confined to Iran. A number of Iranian athletes appeared to support the uprising on the world stage. Climber Elnaz Rekabi took part in a competition in South Korea without wearing a headscarf — mandatory for all women representing the country abroad.

Concerns for Rekabi’s welfare grew after a stilted message posted on her Instagram account claimed she was unintentionally not wearing a headscarf. She later returned home to crowds of supporters.

In November, members of Iran’s men’s soccer team at the World Cup refused to sing the national anthem during their first match against England, widely interpreted as a gesture of solidarity with the protesters back home.

Sardar Azmoun, a forward on the team, has been the most vocal champion of the uprising. “I don’t care if I’m sacked,” Azmoun wrote in a since-deleted post on Instagram last September. “Shame on you for killing people so easily. Viva Iranian women.” He later issued an apology on Instagram.

When the team was eliminated from the competition, protesters at home erupted in celebration over what they viewed as a symbolic defeat for the Islamic Republic.

سنندج شادی مردم پس از باخت تیم فوتبال جمهوری‌اسلامی.#مهسا_امینی pic.twitter.com/uCn7FWZ1E0

— +۱۵۰۰تصویر (@1500tasvir) November 30, 2022

translated:
People's happiness in Sanandaj after the defeat of the football team of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

7 Showing global solidarity

در مراسم خاکسپاری جواد حیدری، از کشته‌شدگان اعتراضات به قتل #مهسا_امینی، خواهر او موهایش را بر مزار برادرش کوتاه میکند. pic.twitter.com/g3lg4fUsqq

— +۱۵۰۰تصویر (@1500tasvir) September 25, 2022

translated:
At the funeral of Javad Heydari, one of the victims of the murder protests #مهسا_امینی , his sister cuts her hair at her brother's grave.

As the death toll rose during protests, a video shared on social media showed a woman cutting her hair over the grave of her brother, Javad Heydari, who was killed during the demonstrations. The gesture is found in ancient Persian literature as a sign of protest, anger or grief.

Women around the world, from members of the Iranian diaspora to politicians and celebrities, cut their hair in solidarity.

And BTW - "morality police"? How in the blue-eyed buck naked fuck does that make sense to somebody?

Today's Champion

Sha'Carri Richardson got stiffed really bad four years ago when they kicked her off the US Olympic team for testing positive for marijuana.

It would appear she's just about all the way back.

See ya in Paris next year, kid - tear 'em up.

The Return

Vice President Harris joined Brittney Griner (top)

 and several members of the Phoenix Mercury

in the locker room before the game

(Mario Tama/Getty Images)

To be sure, I don't care all that much about a basketball game, or a basketball league, or a basketball player.

But there's something more important about the Brittney Griner thing than simply one shitty thing that one shitty government did to one individual American. That's not trivial, but it's not all that unusual either.

The thing is that the US government went out of its way, stepped up big, and helped a woman of color who was being fucked over for no better reason than "We've got the power - we do whatever we want - so fuck you."

My government did good things for a woman of color. That's not something that lands on the front page very often here in USAmerica Inc.

Brittney Griner’s improbable WNBA return was accompanied by a sense of triumph

LOS ANGELES — Brittney Griner crouched slightly at the half-court line, leaped and extended a long arm over her lean 6-foot-9 frame to easily bat the ball backward to her teammate. It was one of several movements — the tip-off to start the game — that Griner has performed hundreds of times over the past decade as the dominant center for the Phoenix Mercury.

But doing it again, and this soon — in a fired-up arena with the vice president in attendance — would have been nearly impossible to picture less than a year ago, when Griner was shackled in a Russian court, being sentenced to nine years in prison.

By the scoreboard alone, Griner’s return Friday to professional basketball, as Phoenix took on the Los Angeles Sparks to open the 2023 WNBA season, was a rout. The Sparks claimed a 94-71 victory, and Griner had 18 points, six rebounds and four blocks in 25 minutes. But her return cemented one of the most unlikely comeback stories in sports history — and one of the most unusual.

Griner, a top star in her league, faced a dark future in a penal colony as a pawn in international relations after customs officials in Russia, where she played for a professional team during the WNBA offseason, found vape cartridges with cannabis oil in her luggage. She ultimately spent 294 days in Russian custody before being returned to the United States in December in a controversial prisoner swap for convicted arms trafficker Viktor Bout. Friday’s season opener was her first WNBA game since Game 4 of the WNBA Finals on Oct. 17, 2021.

Following the game, Griner, 32, said that her incarceration caused her to “appreciate everything a little bit more” — which included a warm welcome in an opposing team’s arena and a surprise visit to the locker room by Vice President Harris. But the sentimentality had its limits.

“Not good enough,” Griner said to sum up the game. “We didn’t get the dub.”

The night at times felt like a celebration accompanied by a basketball game. Before tip-off, Griner’s every movement was followed by a gaggle of video and still photographers. Fans waved cutout photos of her face, and the announcer led the arena in a chant of, “Welcome home BG!” Griner motioned to her heart as she received a standing ovation. The vice president walked on the court and waved, and several celebrities, including former Lakers all-star Pau Gasol, Hall of Famer Magic Johnson and tennis champion Billie Jean King, sat courtside.

Griner stood with her teammates during the national anthem, a departure from her stance pre-incarceration, when she refused to take the court during the anthem. Her protest, which started amid national uproar over police brutality and racism in 2020, attracted conservative ire when she then required rescue from the American government. Griner explained after the game that the anthem “just means a little bit more to me now,” saying of her incarceration: “I was literally in a cage and could not stand the way I wanted to.”

Griner said that she still supports her teammates who choose not to stand for the anthem, adding that making such decisions for yourself “actually makes you more American."

Mercury Coach Vanessa Nygaard echoed that sentiment before the game, calling Friday a “day of joy" that made her proud of her country. “We brought home this woman, this Black gay woman, from a Russian jail,” Nygaard said. "And America did that because they valued her. ... It makes me very proud to be an American. And even though there are people for who that doesn’t make them proud, for me, I see [Griner], and I see hope.”

Griner was stopped at a Moscow-area airport on Feb. 17, 2022 — a week before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — but her detention was not reported in the press for weeks afterward. For most of 2022, the American public — and Griner’s family and teammates — only received sporadic glimpses of her plight via images of her in chains or behind jail cell bars. An eight-time all-star who helped lead the Mercury to a championship in 2014, Griner sometimes seemed forgotten — which Nygaard tried to combat last year by starting every news conference with a new tally of how many days she had been incarcerated in Russia.

Nygaard said that Griner’s freedom was a result of the persistence of those within the league. “When one of their sisters was in this predicament, this terrible situation, they used their voice and they amplified it,” Nygaard said. “I think it was the voices of the WNBA and the fans of the WNBA that finally got the Biden administration until they said, ‘You know what, let’s make this happen.’ ”

In December, President Biden authorized the swap of Griner for Bout, a Russian national serving a 25-year sentence in American prison for arms trafficking. In remarks announcing Griner’s return, Biden said that Griner “didn’t ask for special treatment,” and that her only request was that his administration not “forget about me and the other American detainees.” Griner has since attempted to put a focus on those detainees still in Russia by posting messages to her social media encouraging “everyone that played a part in bringing me home to continue their efforts to bring all Americans home.”

Griner’s saga has shed light on the compensation of the world’s best female basketball players, whose relatively paltry pay — WNBA salaries top out at just over $200,000 — has forced even the greatest of them to moonlight overseas, as Griner was when she was detained. And even with all of the pomp for Friday’s game, which was broadcast on ESPN and attracted national sports reporters, the empty upper decks of the Crypto.com Arena did not escape the attention of players and the Mercury coach. “Honestly, c’mon L.A. — we didn’t sell out the arena for B.G.?” Nygaard said. “It was great, it was loud, but how was it not a sellout?”

Griner expressed hope that the media focus on her will bring new fans to the WNBA. “Hopefully everybody tuning in to see me now will see somebody else,” she said.

Griner scored 11 of her points in the first half but appeared to tire in the second half, and after the game discussed improving her stamina to the point in which she could play 40 minutes if necessary. These are the sorts of problems — basketball problems — that, Griner acknowledged after the game, she sometimes thought she would never experience again.

“Me personally, I look at it as the worst case scenario so I don’t get hopes up,” Griner said of her perspective while incarcerated. She then added with a wink: “I’ll elaborate on that a little bit more, just make sure you get a copy of the book.”

C'mon Ladies

 By Karen Attiah - WaPo (pay wall)

Opinion - White Southern women are holding us back

Pour one out for us in Texas. We’re really hurting this week. So this newsletter is a little on the short side. …

The state voted overwhelmingly Republican during Tuesday’s midterm elections, even more so than in 2020. Incumbent GOP Gov. Greg Abbott soundly defeated his Democratic challenger, former congressman Beto O’Rourke. Republicans also retained all of the major statewide positions, including Attorney General Ken Paxton — who has long been under legal indictment. Sigh.

Before I begin, I know what many of you think. That Texas should be given back to Mexico. Or at the very least that none of y’all would miss us if we seceded. Yeah, I read your comments on my pieces!

It’s true that Texas’s statewide outcomes seem even more hopeless for Democrats here, considering that a “red wave” slaughter of Democrats did not materialize nationally, as many pundits predicted. But to be honest, it’s hard to feel happy about a smaller-than-predicted national tide, when Texas’s red ocean levels only seem to be rising.

The question a lot of non-Texans are asking is: “Why?” Why would the state reelect the same leadership after our deadly power-grid failure, after the Uvalde school shooting, after the criminalization of reproductive rights?

I don’t have all the answers. Voter suppression is a factor, and there’s the sheer size of the Republicans’ war chest. Voter polarization is a powerful force. It’s tough to overcome all of that.

White men vote Republican; we all know that. But there is another group that consistently supports the GOP’s anti-woman, do-nothing-about-dead-kids stance, and that is White women. Seriously, what gives?

White women (64 percent) voted for Abbott in about the same numbers that White men did (69 percent).

Black women, on the other hand, went 90 percent for O’Rourke. We held it down. As usual.

A similar story played out in Georgia’s gubernatorial race, in which White women overwhelmingly voted for Republican incumbent Brian Kemp and Black women voted for his challenger, Democrat Stacey Abrams:

And, of course, we all remember that a majority of White women voted for President Donald Trump in 2020.

There is a lot of focus in media circles on how Latinos will vote. There has long been an assumption that an increase in the number of non-White voters could dislodge the GOP’s stranglehold on my home state. But the reality is, Southern White women are the lady foot soldiers of the GOP’s agenda. We will not get free until that changes.

There is, of course, a long history of White women serving the conservative agenda of the Southern patriarchy. I mean, the United Daughters of the Confederacy and their funding are a large part of why many Confederate monuments still stand in the United States.

If there was ever a time for White women to mobilize at the ballot box, it should have been the year that Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned abortion rights. I’ve seen and reported on Black women who are fighting for all women’s rights, children’s rights and better education. And yet those favors and efforts are not returned to us. And the polls consistently show that.

White women’s political behavior, especially in the South, makes it difficult, if not damn near impossible for meaningful change to occur. The racists, misogynists and anti-LGBTQ forces in the GOP have been banking on this for a long time — and they are clearly still reaping the rewards.