Stop Patriarchy

From Delhi to Ohio & everywhere else: If You’re Not Fighting Rape, You Are Condoning It!

By Sunsara Taylor

On Dec. 16, 2012 a 23-year-old medical student was kidnapped, repeatedly gang-raped and tortured on a bus in Delhi, India which had been taken over by six men. She was raped repeatedly, beaten viciously, and penetrated by a rusty iron rod which ruptured her internal organs. By the time her rapists dumped her naked body under an overpass, along with her male companion who had sustained broken bones and a severe beating, 95% of her intestines had been pulled out of her body. Her rapists attempted to run her over with the bus, but her companion managed to pull her out of the way. Still, her ordeal was not over. For nearly two hours, as blood poured from her body, medical treatment was delayed – first as passersby refused to stop and then as police delayed and debated over whose jurisdiction and responsibility she was. On December 29th, after 13 days of emergency surgeries and medical attention, she died.

On August 11, 2012, a 16-year-old girl in Steubenville, Ohio passed out at a party. While she was unconscious, the stars of the local football team stripped her naked, raped her, and goaded party-goers into urinating on her while crowds looked on. They dragged the unconscious girl to three different parties, violating her throughout the night. In cellphone footage taken that night, one of the rapists can be seen laughing and joking about what he and others did to the girl. Referring to the fact that she was unresponsive as this assault went on, he jokes,“Is it really rape, cuz you don’t know if she wanted it or not. She might have wanted it. That might have been her final wish.” While this girl did not, in fact, die, a group of guys can be heard laughing as one of them goes on for a full twelve minutes saying things like, “She is deader than OJ Simpson’s wife,” and, “She is deader than Trayvon Martin.”

How different are these two stories, really?

Call to Action

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Spreading these bold palm cards around nyc reaches a diverse variety of people. We’re engaging in both profound conversations and heated debates, but we’re also just spreading this message which yields a wide range of reactions. Initially, the slogan about porn provokes surprise in gasps and giggles. When the card is flipped that surprise is quickly transformed in to sincerity (the back features 7 things people can do to stop patriarchy). In our society, we are trained that the conditions women are kept under are natural, that we cannot change them, that we should just get used to it. The idea that these conditions can change is new and extremely refreshing. A lot of people have been waiting for this for a long time, I know I have been.

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Taking Patriarchy by Storm—Saturday volunteers protested some of the many sites of women’s oppression in NYC… St. Patrick’s cathedral, porn stores, hooters, and more ugliness. Stop the war on women! We are just getting started…

Donate generously at stoppatriarchy.org to spread this resistance!

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Slavery by Another Name: Sex Work and the “Empowerment” Charade in Gender Studies

An Open Letter on Sexual Subjugation and Intellectual Rationalization

by Sunsara Taylor

Some people say that it is wrong to call for the abolition of pornography, prostitution and the entire global sex industry. They claim that doing so only further stigmatizes the women—and very young girls—who are bought and sold and denies these women—and these very young girls—their “agency.” Instead of abolishing the sex industry, these people insist, we should be “empowering” women and girls to “reclaim sex work” and we should be fighting the sense of shame that is imposed on these women and girls for the “work” that they do.

Outrageously, a great many of those making this argument are concentrated in the “Gender Studies” departments at universities and colleges throughout this country and therefore have disproportionate influence over the thinking of young people who are concerned about the oppressed conditions of women throughout the world.

To those who make this argument, and to all those influenced by it, I pose the following:

During the many long and bitter years of outright chattel slavery in the history of the United States, did Black people suffer not only physical brutality, cruelty and disfigurement on a mass scale, but also tremendous psychological trauma, shame, and humiliation as a major part of that experience?

Undoubtedly!

But, does that mean that those generations of enslaved people needed to be “empowered” to make the most of their situation within the confines of slavery? Did they need to be counseled and told not to feel so ashamed or devalued just because they were enslaved?

Or did they need people, millions and millions of people, to fight and to sacrifice to put an end to the back-breaking, spirit-crushing crime against humanity of slavery and, in that process, to repudiate the ideology and culture of white supremacy and Black inferiority which was not only promoted by the U.S. ruling class but which also inflicted deep scars on the psyches of the oppressed themselves?

For anyone with any sense of history and a conscience, the question answers itself.

Applying the same basic standard today, it is simply immoral to refuse to stand up against and demand the abolition of the global sex industry which dehumanizes, degrades, tortures, exploits, traumatizes and brutalizes millions of women and very young girls each year—and which fosters a culture where all women are demeaned, degraded, devalued and endangered. Beyond that, it is impossible to conceive of putting an end to the stigma and the shame that is heaped on women who are used and degraded in the sex industry while simultaneously rationalizing and defending this very industry as it daily treats these women (and very young girls) as nothing more than human chattel.

End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women!

(Source: revcom.us)

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I, at first, when I went to Revolutionary Bookstore and heard Sunsara speak I didn’t see the seriousness of porn and I kind of just brushed it off. You think, okay this is something that’s pleasurable, you look at it maybe with your boyfriend you don’t want to seem too feminist you don’t want to seem too sensitive. But I come from a community, an urban community where guys kind of have these sexist attitudes. A lot of their attitudes, I believe, is shaped by porn. But it is shaped by, me as a young person of color, it’s shaped by the music industry. Watching BET, seeing how guys depict women, its like a watered down version of porn. And when you don’t look that way they kind of have these attitudes that you are not woman enough or you’re trying to be the man, look how you dress, you got your hoody, you got your coat. If I have Timberland boots. And often times, why I dress the way I dress I because I don’t want to be fucked with and harassed, you understand? I’m a care-giver. I also graduated from college; I wear many different hats and it’s a shame that I feel that as a woman of color that I’m already being reduced down in society because society sees me as a fucking bitch trick or whore. And you hear what they have said about Whitney Houston about her being a crack head and whore. It’s not just about porn, but it takes it to a macro level. When you have executives and how they view women. My sister works in corporate America and these guys who wear suits, who wear briefcases when they leave from work where do they frequently go? You understand? Strip joints! They purchase escorts…

young woman quoted by Sunsara Taylor in Fierce, Joyous, Inspiring… A Movement to End Pornography and Patriarchy is Launched!

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I want to say what I saw when I come into the porn store. And not just what I saw, but what I felt and what I realized about pornography made with women. When we went to the porn store, on the ‘Torture Wall’ we saw women with these things on their breasts that stop the blood and that is very painful for women. It is not something that we enjoy but the people who made [did it] because that made money and because of this society thinks that women enjoy doing that. But that is not true. And then we saw women giving pleasure to dogs. Because they said that women enjoy this. Which women enjoy this? I am a woman and I don’t enjoy that. And the other things that we saw was a tv showing the second floor of the shop and what was on the second floor were women selling their bodies and they were showing us, the people who were not on the second floor, how the women sell their bodies and how the women are ‘happy’ because of that. It was fucked up. Then, we need to join this movement. You need to join this movement and you need to build it. Because a whole different world is possible. Because we can imagine it and we can build it. You can do it with us

young woman quoted by Sunsara Taylor in Fierce, Joyous, Inspiring… A Movement to End Pornography and Patriarchy is Launched!

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Join Us Saturday @LeftForum: DEBATE!

Saturday, March 17
at The Left Forum at Pace University in NYC -

KEY PANELS & DEBATES!

Come listen, learn more and volunteer to be part of the team getting the word out about this new movement to End Pornography & Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women!

►An Army of Rape: Why Supporting the Troops is Wrong! - 10:00 am
more info

► Pornography & the Sex Industry: Reclaim, Regulate, Uproot, or Abolish? A Debate - 12:00 noon
more info

► ABORTION: An Ugent Part of Women’s Liberation — Differing Viewpoints on How to Win this Fight - 3:00 pm
more info

full schedule & info: www.leftforum.org

email: stoppatriarchy@gmail.com to volunteer

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We know that women in our society are under attack and all men, be they men of conscious, must stand now with them in solidarity. We know their rights to reproductive freedom are under assault from both the state and the conservative base. We know their bodies are likewise under assault; that rape and violence against women is a problem that has not gone away by ignoring it. We know their minds are under attack by our culture which continues to value women’s thoughts less than men, and at a lower level of significance than their physicality. We know that pornography, which has become one of the most powerful economic forces in the world today, continues to portray women as the mere sex objects of men, and continues to earn primarily male profits, and that this helps reinforce the rape culture that seemingly constitutes American culture today. The military is guilty of some of the worst offenses carried out against women. In the U.S. Military, women continue to be raped and sexually assaulted at a rate much greater than the general population (1 in 3). Very often, the perpetrator of these crimes is a male within a woman’s ‘chain-of-command’ making it near impossible for her to seek and attain justice. So often, when violence is done against women in the military, it never becomes known. Rather than become a cause for public outrage, too often these incidents turn into private shame.

Matthis Chiroux, an anti-war veteran quoted in Fierce, Joyous, Inspiring… A Movement to End Pornography and Patriarchy is Launched!

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The Priest and the Pornographer: two sides of the same patriarchal coin.

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porn and sex are not the same thing

Comments:

Problematic. March 9, 2012 - 2:45pm

The language in this is EXTREAMELY hetero-sexist. What about pornographers that make porn for women, for lesbians, for gay men, for bisexuals? What about pornographers that are WOMEN.

Ejaculating on some one’s face is not necessarily an act of violence. When a woman cums in man’s face on film is that an act of violence. So is all gay porn anti-male? If you do not like violent pornography that’s fine but don’t make a blanket statement that like this is the only pornography available or try to speak for the men and women that perform in adult movies and other sex workers. We have mouths and can speak for ourselves.

Talking like 90% of films are all Facialabuse.com paints and unrealistic picture. If YOU find a man ejaculating in your face terrible that’s fine. I do not and I engaged in the act far before ever seeing it in pornography.

Hatred of porn already has added to the legislation of women’s bodies in this country. LA now requires the use of condoms in filming taking away women’s rights to chose how they are penitrated.

I’m a woman, I do not support patriarchy but that doesn’t mean I can’t also enjoy some porn. Non-Patriarchal feminist porn exists if you care to look for it and find it.

-N’jaila Rhee of BlasianBytch.com

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porn and sex are not the same thing March 9, 2012 - 4:53pm

We are not fighting for a ban on pornography nor condemning sex or depictions of sex. We are fighting for people who’ve been inundated with pornography and a pornified culture to be challenged and invited to get out of that and into something much more liberating. Pornography comes from the greek root “pornagraphos” which refered to depictions of women sex slaves or concubines. Erotic comes from “eros” which refers to passionate love or sexual desire. We need more real sex-ed, more open atmosphere around sexuality, more space for all of that. Pornography is the sexualized degradation of one person by another, and because we live in a patriarchal society it is most often the degradation of women by men.

The fact that there is some porn where females degrade men, or that there is gay porn where gay people degrade one another, or that there are some women who are in on producing porn does not change the fact that it is objectively the sexualization of degradation and enslavement. And that the overwhelming majority of the degradation is enacted on women’s bodies.

Ejaculation in a woman’s face as an institutionalized act which is standard in porn and taken to extremes in bukakke porn is a reflection of a society that has no respect or regard for women. The story above, of a woman who is whispering about how humiliated she is that every guy she’s ever dated has begged her let them do this reflects NOT personal preferences being negotiated through two full and equal human beings in the bedroom — but the social conditioning of two people by a world of degradation and increasingly degrading porn. That is why she felt defensive and they did not. It was NOT an equal negotiation.

And to say that insisting on condoms is a violation of women’s right to be penetrated any way she wants? That is just ludicrious. No one is regulating condoms in every bedroom — they are saying that when women are getting paid to be penetrated (or anyone else in porn) there should be a condom. Women in porn are essentially renting out their bodies, they are not “choosing” how they want to be penetrated — and insisting on condoms will save some lives and lots of disease, not intrude upon their rights.

-Sunsara Taylor

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Los Angeles International Women's Day Protest and Car Caravan

12 Noon - Her Clinic - 2502 S. Figueroa (& Adams, near USC) - Support Abortion Providers! Oppose anti-woman, anti-abortion picketers.

2 PM - Archdiocese of LA, 3424 Wilshire Blvd. (near Normandie) - The Catholic Church’s approach to women, gender, science and sexuality - like that of many religions - is a Dark Ages disaster!
4 PM - Hustler Store, 8920 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood - Stop the brutality and objectification of women in the name of free speech. Society is becoming saturated with the sexualized degradation of women.

End Pornography & Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women!
Abortion on Demand and Without Apology!
Fight for the Emancipation of Women All Over the World!

For more info, contact iwdlosangeles@gmail.com

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Your help is needed to pull of a powerful protest to launch a new movement to STOP THE WAR ON WOMEN. Contribute NOW at http://igg.me/p/71864. Your contribution must be in by March 8th at Midnight! From the aggressive religious patriarchs to the expanding porn industry…. END THE ENSLAVEMENT AND DEGRADATION OF WOMEN!

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This is the trauma of entering a war zone. This is the reaction of people who have not lost their humanity, who haven’t hardened themselves to human suffering, confronting a tsunami of sheer hatred for, and violence against, women. And seeing first-hand that there’s a market for it. And being jostled by men eager to get through those aisles and purchase those videos. And confronting a whole multi-billion dollar industry that markets, that produces, and trafficks in this hatred….
This hatred for women saturates and shapes the landscape that all of us walk through every minute of every day.

-Sunsara Taylor, describing the response of some people who joined in our excursion to a porn store in Times Square last week, in “From the Expanding Porn Industry to the Aggressive Religious Patriarchs: End the Enslavement & Degradation of Women!”

Get involved - help fund the protest on International Women’s Day.

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