A Great Article on Porn and Strip Clubs

We are working so hard to normalize sexism as something that is an innate part of masculinity and I’m just not quite sure why. If we can imagine that it’s possible for people not to murder one another or imagine that there be an end to war or child abuse or whatever other kinds of behaviour we’ve agreed, as a society, is unacceptable, or, at least, undesirable, why are we so avidly working to preserve sexism?

Why are we so unwilling to see porn or strip clubs or prostitution as something invented by a society that is not egalitarian? Just because you get an erection when you see a woman being objectified onscreen doesn’t mean women deserve to be objectified. And I don’t say that because I have a hate-on for erections, or masturbation, or penises, or even sex (though some women hate all those things and that’s perfectly fine). But because I can separate men from misogyny. I don’t believe that your erection is dependent on my subordination.

And you know why? Because I don’t believe you were born an asshole.

Childhood Exposure to Violence Changes Brain Function

This is what has happened to me as a result of being around violence as a child as well as as an adult. I have P.T.S.D. I stay very stressed. It is hard for me to relax.

When a person has been exposed to certain kinds of stressful situations, such as ongoing family violence, the amygdala may become overreactive. When this occurs, the body's alarm systems react more quickly and more energetically to threats than they do in normally reactive people. This neural phenomenon has been documented in soldiers who show symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD.

This is an important article.

The Goddess Aradia

Goddess: Aradia /Aaradia

A champion Italian Goddess sworn to protect her people against the
aggression of masculine faith and its persecutors during the reign of
medieval terror. The original Aradia was a female Christ figures in
Italy who taught around 1353. She was imprisoned more than once,
escaped several times and eventually disappeared.

This is the story of Aradia is the daughter of Diana and Lucifer God
of the Sun. (Not the christian god of hell aka called Satan). She is
considered the Italian Queen of the Witches. Aradia is an extremely
powerful entity and a protectress of Witches in general.

The story I would like to tell her is the story of Aradia the daughter
of Diane and Lucifer. The Queen of the Witches. *The Story Of Aradia*
Goddess Diana used magick to charm Lucifer. He was a bit afraid of
her, most likely because she was a Moon Goddess, and very dark next to
his light. Of this union, Aradia was born. Diana liked using magick,
and wanted to develop her magickal strengths further, so she decided
to go to Earth and do this. She disguised herself as a mortal woman
and went to Earth. On Earth, Diana found that times were hard and the
people were oppressed. She decided to teach the people magick, so that
they were more easily able to care for themselves, and to protect
themselves from their oppressors. Diana became a Witch, and she taught
many people her craft. After a long while, Diana had no choice but to
reveal herself as a Goddess. After doing this, Diana realized she must
return to the heavens, and so she did. Diana knew there was more
teaching to be done with the mortals, so she decided to send her
daughter, Aradia, to Earth. Aradia was to take over where her mother
had left off. Aradia was sent to Earth with instructions from Diana to
be carried out. Aradia was instructed to teach the mortals aggressive
magick, in order to help themselves from their horrific oppression.
Aradia taught them well, as she was a strong and powerful Goddess. For
the gifts of magick she gave so many, Aradia is considered "Queen of
the Witches.

How Diana give birth to the Aadia (Herodias) "It is Diana! Lo! She
rises crescented." ~ Keats Endymion -Krats' Endymion "Make more bright
The Star Queen's crescent on her marriage night." -Ibid.

---Lady Abigail

Red Light District

The Delusional Assumptions of Capitalism

Some have helped bring this nineteenth-century dissent up to date on the basis of a critical scientific analysis of the evolution of the capitalist system, (Paul Sweezy, Howard Parsons, David Harvey, John Bellamy Foster, et al.).

Dominionism is Scary

What you Didn't Know About the South

What You Didn't Know About the South: Surprises from a White Southerner

“The South” is an idea too often wrapped in a fog that emanates from the left as well as the right.

Yesterday I read an article by Peter Birkenhead, a Californian, who recently visited Louisiana and found “The South” a benighted land dominated by misty-eyed racists in denial of their slave history (See " Why the White South Is Still in Denial About Slavery"). His experience at a slave cabin-turned restaurant leaves him outraged and ready to send back his gumbo, never to return to Dixie.

I know the feeling. The South is my birthplace, and there are times when I'd like to cast it off, too. But my southern drawl and my heritage come along with me wherever I go. So we've had to come to terms with each other, despite an adulthood spent in New York.

I can't deny that in many places in the South, rebel flag-wavers abound, prejudices survive, and memory dissolves into myth. This is a pathology that must be confronted at every opportunity. But travelers have a way of taking a small slice of a place and creating a monolith, and Birkenhead’s account –despite its insights—leaves room for illumination and for recognition of the complexities that make this region of the country –and the history of slavery -- a challenging object of study.

As a white southerner, details of my own history challenge what most of my northern friends envision when they think of “The South,” an idea too often wrapped in a fog that emanates from the left as well as the right.

So pull up a chair. You may be in for a few surprises.

The Year in Review, Sexually Speaking

A year of focusing on sex scandals like Anthony Wiener's while reproductive rights were under viscious attack.

Ron Paul on Sexual Harassment

Ron Paul lives in some sort of alternative universe. He's dead wrong on sexual harassment. Sexual harassment creates a workplace that's bad for everyone. Sexual harassment has been a tool, a weapon, so to speak, of keeping women down in the workplace. The sexual harassment segment begins at around 5:33...but his response on Aids and health insurance is astounding as well begins around 3:12

Why Iceland Should be in the News, but Isn't

Look, Kitten, I am Too a Feminist - Fauxminism and Men

This is a great article about male allies - what they should and should not do.

Great Little Video

Great Little Video

Great Video

This is beautiful!

A Great Quote

"I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him at a store and he asked for my autograph."-Shirley Temple

Street Harassment

Great article.

Great New Blog

Well, it's a blog I just discovered. It's called "psychopathy awareness" and it is about what being in love with a psychopath or sociopath does to one's life.

I Love My Blog

This place feels so safe. Facebook has ended up not being safe. I can say what I want here, my own little corner of the world. Now I just need to get my readers back. Come back, come back.

Hear Mother Jones' REAL VOICE!!!

This is the only known recording of Mother Jones. How exciting!

What My Sister Didn't Let Her Facebook Friends Read

(see two posts down for more on this incident)

She announced out of the clear blue on her own page, pulling from a conversation elsewhere on Facebook, that I call my kid a possible "sociopath like her father" and a "sadist," then let her friends take their shots at me, one even saying, "That woman does not deserve the title of 'mother'" and another saying the poor pitiful teenager is just misunderstood.

This is a kid who saw another woman in her father's lap when she was five, told on him, and still tells new people from time to time that it was her fault her parents' marriage ended up so rocky because she is the one who told. In her own life, however, she considers herself a "playa" and makes sure to play with boys' hearts and break them before they can break hers. She laughs at other people's pain. She laughs when people beg for their lives in scary movies and laughs more when they die bloody and horrific deaths. She beat me with my own cane. She calls me "bitch" and "cunt," just like her father. She is cold and cares about nothing and no one other than her own materialistic desires. Oh, and playing with boys' hearts and sleeping around. And hating me.

So, here was the response my sister didn't have the guts to let HER readers read:

This angel of mine, whom I adore and considered an angel right up until she did it, beat me over the head last year with my own cane while I was ill. Up until then, she had been caught skipping out in the middle of the night -treated only lovingly and talked to. She had been caught sneaking alcohol - still my darling angel and she was lovingly talked to. Then, the day she beat me with my own cane, even then, she was my angel. When her father called the police and the local small town police chief was fingering his handcuffs, saying he had a daughter her age and that if she had hit HIS wife, he would have beaten her ass and then let the other cops have her, all eyes were on me, as the victim. I chose not to let them take her away. When she was little and something was wrong and she could not sit still to learn, I and I alone saved her e ducation by calling around, finding a private school that could best cater to her learning style. I found she could not sit still to read, so I took her out in search of every hands on experience there was - combing the local paper for free things, even making it through a guided tour of the local vet school and managing not to pass out while she put her hands in cow guts. When she got to public school, I insisted on testing and then got the private testing to get her 504 diagnosis - auditory processing disorder - and went to all the 504 meetings, followed up on all of the accommodations she was supposed to get every year, checked homework online every day. I even discovered her best learning style was to keep moving, so all the way to high school, I made flash cards of her test information, then drilled her during walks through the neighborhood, studying in motion as the ancient Greeks did.

I did it all. I was super mom.

Eventually, however, her FATHER'S ABUSE of me took its toll. I began to suffer from PTSD. He is a sadist and a sociopath. He raped me repeatedly. He molested or attempted to molest three teen girls. He disrespected me in front of our daughter and called me "bitch" and "cunt" in front of her. He put his hands around my neck during sex, gave me inhalants because I would not sleep with him after finding out about his thing for teenage girls. He wrapped a belt tightly around my neck. He put plastic bags over my head during sex more times than I can count. He also got me drunk and had five men have sex with me while he videotaped it. I never agreed, never met these men. Felt a hot warmth on me and realized while I was being brutalized, he was shining a bright camera light on me. He still quite enjoys this videotape, so I am told.

A few weeks after I escaped, I brought my daughter to live with me, but, as much of the educational literature on domestic abuse suggests is typical acting out for children of such families (you DID READ educational literature on children of abuse before commenting on my parenting, DIDN'T YOU???), she blames the abused mother for being weak, for being beaten and broken and having no fight. Once I got some spunk back, she was in no mood to take orders, fifteen or not. I brought her to live someplace new. I did everything to try to please - bus money from my housemates to get around D.C., a keyboard for her new piano class, a new room painted purple. Nothing for myself, all for her. But, for financial reasons, we had to leave D.C. and move to another tiny town. She purposely flunked out of school as a way of demanding going back to Louisiana - and I agreed she could live with her PATERNAL GRANDMOTHER, as I do not trust her father with teenage girls. But they did a bait and switch. He took her and kept her, and I have no money to fight it. My daughter lives with an abuser, calls me a "mother-fucking bitch" and a "cunt." She refuses my phone calls. She is interested in all the wrong things, not the kind of person I worked at raising at all, taking her to political rallies and Sunday school and social justice events and teaching her to care about others above self. None of it stuck. And, yes, I AM afraid she is turning out to be like her father. She has no feelings about whom she hurts. None. She grew up with an abuser and she has an abuser's mentality. Don't think that admission comes lightly from me. It is pure agony, a mother's heart cracked in half and bleeding all over the damn place.

My facebook page is assuredly not a public forum. Only friends can see what I write. I am not Facebook friend with Sarah. Furthermore, I have my friends list carefully broken down into sub-groups. I choose a group for every SINGLE post I make. For instance, "political" is reserved for posts of a political nature. If I am not SURE of an old friend's politics, I keep my political stuff hidden and available only to the like-minded activists in my group. "Trusted" is a tiny group of family and close friends. Only they can read the really personal stuff. Those of you in the group read things and think that because you can see it, one hundred others in my friends' list can as well. This is not so. Only about a dozen of you can. Don't make assumptions about "public availability," Miriam and Rachelle, because YOU are able to read something. You may be among just ten people who can see it.

There. Now, those of you passersby who felt entitled to cat-call the clothesline on my sister's page at least know ALL OF THE DIRTY LAUNDRY. You are much like my daughter, it occurs to me, full of fury at me without knowing that I am the victim of abuse at the hands of her father, without knowing what it is like to have your husband hold your legs back for five men to use and abuse you while he videotapes, without knowing what it is like to have her father hold plastic grocery bags over your face while he gets off on suffocation games, to learn he has attempted to molest two teenagers you dearly love plus another you don't know so well, to be held hostage to his cheating while he does whatever he wants and refuses to fix your car and keeps you hostage in your home in the country for two solid years, to be so weak from it that you can no longer walk and have your ANGEL, you thought, your sweet baby grab your cane and beat you with it.

There is my blood for your entertainment, nosy nellies. Enjoy. Now you can judge but at least do so with some fucking information at your fingertips.

That feels oddly like a coming out of sorts. That is the most about my life I have ever published...you know, my hidden life, my real life, my abuse.

And she deleted it and let people continue to call me an "idiot." I ended up cutting myself last night, for the first time since the new meds. I wonder if they would feel proud if they knew. Apparently that is what they wanted - to be judge and jury. I think it makes people feel superior. It's why people watch Jerry Springer. And heaven knows, my estranged husband did all he could to turn us into a Springer family.

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