Stop Patriarchy

From Alex.

Earlier this week someone I know was talking about how she was hearing International Women’s Day being covered on the radio and in the mainstream this year.  She was astonished at how this day has slid into the background, as something to be “observed,” as if it was a birthday or a funeral.  Today, March 8, International Women’s Day, has it’s roots in REVOLUTION; it is a day to FIGHT for the liberation of women, and in the midst of a whole society that has been saturated with the normalization of patriarchy, most of what we will hear throughout today and tomorrow will be anything BUT that.

Let’s unite tomorrow to DEFY that normalization, that forced and falsely justified numbness to the crimes committed against women every day, in every corner of the world.  It is true today as it has been for too long: No place in the world is it safe to be a woman!  Compare the women in Pakistan and Afghanistan who live with the very real fear of having acid thrown in their faces as a result of their parents rejecting a marriage proposal or even as a result of trying to go to school, to the women in Ireland, or Mississippi - whose last abortion clinic was just informed of impending closure - who have and will be left to bleed to death, or have their futures foreclosed, if they need an abortion.  What is the resounding reality that connects these women together across the globe?  The message being blasted at all of us, and actively lobbied for, defended, legislated, enforced, and validated all around the world:  There is a very well-defined place for women in society.  It is on a leash.  Your worth is calculated the same way as the worth of a slave.  Your ability and desire to bear children, and to “please your master” and be subordinate to your husband or father, decides your value as a commodity.

This is the same value calculation being done in the minds of young men and women being “educated” by the most violent and degrading pornography ever to be accepted widely as fun, sexy and normal.  Where better to find women on their knees, in literal chains, being forced to perform such degrading acts as sucking their own shit off of some guy’s dick right after he fucks her in the ass?  Telling girls before they hit their teens, before they even really understand what sex is, that their worth is based on their ability to serve, to succumb, to sell themselves and humiliate themselves for the pleasure of men.  And what about the boys?  Encouraging them to take on the mentality of the slavemaster, the dominator, the oppressor, at every turn.  To be in control of the bodies of women, glamorizing rape, and celebrating slavery.  Even porn that is produced by women, even porn where the actors are paid well, even gay porn, trains the minds of the people that watch it to be either dominant or submissive, there is an actor and an object, whether it is acted out in traditional ways, or ways that sell themselves as more “progressive.” This patriarchal system that promotes the domination of men over women is the same system that shames, threatens, demonizes, and attacks LGBT people for refusing to conform to their “proper” traditional gender roles.  If you can’t imagine sex without porn, you’re fucked.  Where does that leave the majority of us in society today??

For these reasons and more, it is imperative that women and men take a stand, to call BULLSHIT on this very loud, very well-funded message, and the monster of a system that feeds and then congratulates it, while it continues to enslave women, and steal away the humanity of men.  We can and must FIGHT THE POWER, and challenge the terms that were set a long time ago - the terms that are limiting people’s very ability to imagine a world without these horrific, outdated realities.  We actually CAN ultimately create a world where this message would be laughable if it wasn’t so horrible: Your value as a woman is equal to your ability to SUBMIT.  FUCK THAT.

Let’s go out tomorrow and FIGHT.

Let’s call BULLSHIT on the porn stores and strip clubs that profit every single day on the the saturation of society by that multi-billion dollar lie about what a woman’s life, mind, and body is “worth.”  Let’s call BULLSHIT on religious fundamentalisms of every shape and size, that claim moral high ground while at the same time it is selling the same lie as the porn industry: Your value as a woman is equal to your ability to SUBMIT.  Let’s go straight to the right-wing activist churches, and to the Vatican itself, and call BULLSHIT on their blatant hatred and oppression, their calculation of the worthlessness of any woman who would choose NOT to be subservient, or NOT to be a mother.  Women are HUMAN BEINGS, not some product, some toy, some commodity, whose worth needs to be calculated and dictated to all of us by this capitalist system and its bullshit institutions.  

Bring a fighting spirit, a spirit of DEFIANCE against this patriarchal system, and against the biggest lie it promotes - that this is the only way the world can function!  That this is somehow OK or the natural order of things!  That we can’t unite and resist and ultimately fight all the way through to put an END to this system, these institutions, this bullshit message that is so essential to their existence and their prosperity, and to the fear and silence of women everywhere we go.

End Pornography & Patriarchy, The Enslavement & Degradation of Women.

IWD2013 Flier (Bay Area) - View or Download

Cienna Madrid from The Stranger doesn’t like Stop Patriarchy’s call to protest both a Christian fascist church and a porn shop/strip club on International Women’s Day because she doesn’t get that both are expressions of patriarchy and manifestations of the war on women. She blogged about it here.

 What follows is Stop Patriarchy Seattle’s response:

“It feels like the instigators chose popular targets for controversy and then manufactured their rage, rather than launching a protest with the goal of a specific change.”  

From the instigators of Stop Patriarchy: 

 We’ve been on the streets in Seattle talking to hundreds of women in the past few weeks who not only get what we’re saying, but start pouring out their stories of abuse by repressive religious institutions, by the global sex industry, and by men growing up in a pornified culture. When we say the institutions of Mars Hill and Deja Vu/Showgirls both want women on their knees, just in different ways, it resonates with them. They’ve been waiting for a vehicle that calls it all out and makes the connections and they understand our specific goal: To END the enslavement and degradation of women in all its forms.

We didn’t “manufacture” the fact that Deja Vu/Showgirls sells women and that their shop’s videos sexualize violence against women and treat women’s bodies as things to be used for the sexual pleasure of men. We didn’t manufacture that pornography has become increasingly violent and degrading towards women with popular themes such as gang rape, racist bigotry, and incest (such as “Chester Molest Her” - a film sold at this porn shop) We didn’t manufacture the fact that this is all intertwined with and fuels sex trafficking and a global epidemic of rape. So we ask you, where is YOUR rage? This shit isn’t society becoming more comfortable with sex. This is society becoming saturated with the sexualized degradation of women. As our surprisingly popular sticker says, “If You Can’t Imagine Sex Without Porn, You’re Fucked.”

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On March 9th 2013 for International Women’s Day, Stop Patriarchy will be holding a rally at Westlake, in Seattle…but we are not stopping there! We’re going to be protesting several sites that represent the war on women, and how that war is intensifying. The first place we plan to protest is Mars Hill Church…then we will make our presence known in front of the Deja Vu Showgirls strip club/porn store. In between those spots we will be stopping at bus stops to speak out and protest rape and sexual assault. From Delhi to Ohio, and everywhere else, from the global epidemic of rape, to the attacks on abortion rights, from the burkha to the thong…if you are not fighting the war on women, you are condoning it!

Here’s why we plan to go to Mars Hill and Deja Vu Showgirls….while these are presented as opposing forces by opposing sides, they actually have MUCH more in common than most people think. The Christian fascists and the pornographers both enslave women, and they both strip women of their rights, their voices, and their humanity.

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Jan 26^th, 2013 was a great day in San Francisco for Stop Patriarchy and for the fight to win women’s liberation! We started out the day at a celebration of Roe v. Wade, and went there to let people know about the protest against the “Walk for Life.” We also went to convince those who already knew about it, but weren’t going to come out to protest, that it would make a difference if they were part of directly confronting the anti-woman, anti-abortion movement and send the message to them and to the world that Fetuses are Not Babies, Women are Not Incubators, and ABORTION IS NOT MURDER. That they should not go home, they should not settle for celebration, that they should not be deceived into thinking that abortion rights are safe, and that there is no need to turn the tide on the trajectory that we are on towards abortion being more inaccessible, more restricted than it is already, and/or outright illegal.

Outrageously, when we asked to announce this protest from the stage, the organizers for this event denied us the chance to speak, and many that were in attendance at the celebration didn’t even know about the “Walk for Life.” REALLY?! There are 10’s of thousands of woman-hating christian fascists that want to force women into motherhood by denying them the right to abortion and birth control that are descending in their droves into San Francisco….and you don’t TELL people about it?

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from Alex

Stop Patriarchy! Bay Area started our day on Saturday, January 26, at the Trust Women / Silver Ribbon Campaign’s ”Celebration of Women, Life, and Liberty,” a decisively non-confrontational commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Our purpose was to call on every single person at that celebration to join us in directly CONFRONTING and RESISTING the thousands of anti-abortion activists — not even two miles away — who were mobilizing at that very moment to A) march against the basic right of women to have abortions, and B) rally people together under their patriarchal political agenda to overturn Roe v Wade.  

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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? 

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by Samantha Goldman

from World Can’t Wait

We may have forgotten what a Dark Ages mentality looks like in office with George Bush’s departure, so Republican office holders are reminding us.

Now that both Democrats and Republicans are introducing state legislation restricting abortion rights, a key part of the GOP’s strategy is to compete based on who can be more anti-woman.

The theme, it seems, of this year’s Republican campaign is Rape: You Asked and God Delivered. For them, giving birth in any circumstance isn’t redemptive enough for Eve’s sins. We have to get raped and say “thanks” to God.

All of this is part of an ideology where women exist subordinate to and in the service of men’s’ existence and will. Publicized apologies for outrageous statements are not policy changes. These statements are projections of the world that these powerful men would like to see.

Here is some of the rape-lovin’ rhetoric of the GOP:

● Paul Ryan - “I’m very proud of my pro-life record, and I’ve always adopted the idea that, the position that the method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life.” – referring to rape as a “method of conception” when asked if it should it be legal for a woman to be able to get an abortion if she’s raped.

● Todd Akin - “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways of shutting that whole thing down.”

● Richard Mourdock - “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen.”

● Rick Santorum - “I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you… rape victims should make the best of a bad situation.”

These guys aren’t arguing with pro-choice beacons. Mourdock’s opponent, along with many democratic incumbents and candidates, are anti-choice!

These statements shock many. But should they really? As disgusting as this brand of morality is, some feel that this is just a “strategy” the GOP is using to win over those outraged by Obama’s “abortion loving, birth-control dispensing, reign.” In reality however there is no option within the electoral process for women. Our basic rights to control our bodies, or not to be blamed and shamed is not up for a vote. Despite what Obama supporters would like us to believe, these past four years have been a horror and have shown a dangerous trajectory. It is only through this overall context of the War on Women that the impact of these comments becomes starkly clear. State legislation aimed at limiting birth control and abortion has been proposed and enacted at unprecedented rates. The legislation that has passed includes but is not limited to: state sanctioned rape through vaginal ultrasounds, anti-science mandatory counseling prior to abortion, increased waiting periods for abortion, and gestational limitations. An analysis by the Guttmacher Institute found that 2011 saw the most restrictions on abortions passed through state legislatures ever: 135 anti-women laws were enacted.

Men like Mourdock are urged to apologize by people who want to move on. We women are told to just laugh and move on but really, why SHOULD we? They are told to stop talking about rape and we are told to let the issue rest. Why should we stop talking about rape?! In a country where every two minutes someone is raped, why should we not talk about it?!

What these men running for political office are saying isn’t laughable or stupid, it is criminal and a slap in the face to half of humanity. Rape is a brutal criminal act which takes away your feelings of safety, identity, and a piece of your humanity. It is a crime that in our society rape is the subject of jokes and mostly those “jokes” are not sanctioned.

That we live in a society that laughs at, gets off to, legitimizes and even celebrates one of the most heinous crimes, should be discussed. We should be talking about rape. Victims should have the mic, not these men who use their public pulpits to perpetrate the crime. We should be screaming and sharing. We should be talking about rape and about how to get to a world where rape doesn’t exist.

Not in the ballot box, but in the streets on November 17, we will together be standing up against the war on women, against the “you asked for it” logic, against the idea that rape is some loophole to get abortions, against the idea that rape is punishment from God for the sins of women, against the idea that women’s rights are some kind of bargaining chip—take it or leave it.

In the streets together we will launch a sorely needed counter offensive. Stop the crimes of this government! Stop patriarchy!

Abortion on Demand and Without Apology

End Pornography & Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women

Across the country and in different ways, join with others to stand up and speak out.

We will not accept a world where women are routinely raped, brutalized, humiliated and degraded. We will not lie down as women’s right to abortion and even birth control is being stripped away. We will resist the culture of rape and pornography that equates sex with domination and conquest and treats women as mere objects to be plundered by men.

We will RESIST and we will take a big step towards DEFEATING this war on women. And, through doing so, we will become the people and the seeds of a whole better future.

A future where no woman ever again knows what it is to fear for her safety at the hands of men. Where women never again know what it is to give themselves to a man sexually for any reason other than their own desire—free of pressure, judgment, or degradation. A world where men view women as full human beings and full partners. A world where lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people have not only the full rights—but the full respect—as everyone else. And a culture filled with poetry and music and other forms of art that foster deep respect towards women.

Wherever you are and whatever you do on November 17—be it a march or street theater, a protest at a strip club or an anti-abortion church, a speak-out or poetry reading, or some sort of public “social intervention” where a lot of folks gather—you will be joined by others around the country. Every act will be amplified, more people will be woken up and inspired, and this movement—and the possibility of real liberation—will grow!

Contact us today with your plans or your questions: StopPatriarchy@gmail.com

by Karlee

I traveled to New York anticipating an enriching experience. I expected to learn about how best to confront the horrors facing women across the planet, but I did not expect to actually confront them in the bold manner that we did. And it wasn’t enriching…it was fucking life altering and earth rattling for everybody we reached (even those who opposed our message). Before I went, I hated rape culture, I was opposed to pornography’s image of women, and I was definitely vocal about a woman’s right to abortion. However, I was careful about how I expressed this so as not to make people uncomfortable. Women experience constant discomfort at the hands of this patriarchal system and all the institutions that reinforce that. After 10 days, I recognize that nobody should be allowed the luxury of comfort when we can’t even walk down the streets comfortably! 

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