Jo's Miscellany

Liberals: k we’ll censor all v*gin*s and ut*ri now, God forbid we make you uncomfortable

Female, when males invade their spaces or try to pressure them to have sex: penises are triggering and gross

credit to transbenshapiro on instagram

tell trans men they’re trans due to internalized misogyny

i know not all terfs are like this but that’s just a vast majority of them

(IM SORRY IM NOT TRYNA BE RUDE TO ANY NICE FEMINISTS OR NICE TERFS BUT LIKE, I DONT UNDERSTAND THE POINT OF IT 😢😢)

You’re not supposed to do that,” Trump snapped at last night’s State of the Union. His irritation may have been the most revealing moment of the evening. He had just finished announcing how many jobs his administration had created for women, and was about to pat himself on the back for the record number of women elected to Congress. (Most of them elected specifically on the basis of their opposition to him, but never mind.) However, before Trump was done anointing himself a feminist hero, some of the women in the chamber actually started clapping. He immediately broke character to shut them up.

This is Trump’s attitude toward women boiled down to its primal essence: Women exist as convenient rhetorical devices, characters in a story or a lie, a way to drum up emotion in his audience. However, if we actually talk, or argue, or get in his way, his first instinct is to silence and subjugate.

The most notable bit of subjugation, of course, was the announcement that he would pursue a federal 20-week ban on abortion—one which will kill mothers and pregnant people who need later abortions for health reasons, and condemn many unviable fetuses to die longer and more painful deaths shortly after birth. His announcement mimicked the language of the most extreme and reality-detached anti-choice lobbyists: 

“Lawmakers in New York cheered with delight upon the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth.” (They did not.) “These are living, feeling, beautiful babies who will never get the chance to share their love and dreams with the world.” (They are, often, fetuses with anomalies so severe they cannot survive outside the womb—nearly all non-health-related abortions take place in the first trimester, except where abortion restrictions have made the service so difficult to access that the procedure is delayed.) “And then, we had the case of the governor of Virginia where he stated he would execute a baby after birth.” (No, we didn’t have such a case.) “To defend the dignity of every person, I am asking the Congress to pass legislation to prohibit the late-term abortion of children who can feel pain in the mother’s womb.” (There’s no data on when a fetus can “feel pain.” Anti-choice activists seem to have picked the 20-week marker out of thin air. This is an invented fact, a myth, from the same conspiracy theorists and liars who told us Planned Parenthood was selling baby parts.) “Let us work together to build a culture that cherishes innocent life.”

You’re not supposed to do that,” Trump snapped at last night’s State of the Union. His irritation may have been the most revealing moment of the evening. He had just finished announcing how many jobs his administration had created for women, and was about to pat himself on the back for the record number of women elected to Congress. (Most of them elected specifically on the basis of their opposition to him, but never mind.) However, before Trump was done anointing himself a feminist hero, some of the women in the chamber actually started clapping. He immediately broke character to shut them up.

This is Trump’s attitude toward women boiled down to its primal essence: Women exist as convenient rhetorical devices, characters in a story or a lie, a way to drum up emotion in his audience. However, if we actually talk, or argue, or get in his way, his first instinct is to silence and subjugate.

The most notable bit of subjugation, of course, was the announcement that he would pursue a federal 20-week ban on abortion—one which will kill mothers and pregnant people who need later abortions for health reasons, and condemn many unviable fetuses to die longer and more painful deaths shortly after birth. His announcement mimicked the language of the most extreme and reality-detached anti-choice lobbyists: 

“Lawmakers in New York cheered with delight upon the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth.” (They did not.) “These are living, feeling, beautiful babies who will never get the chance to share their love and dreams with the world.” (They are, often, fetuses with anomalies so severe they cannot survive outside the womb—nearly all non-health-related abortions take place in the first trimester, except where abortion restrictions have made the service so difficult to access that the procedure is delayed.) “And then, we had the case of the governor of Virginia where he stated he would execute a baby after birth.” (No, we didn’t have such a case.) “To defend the dignity of every person, I am asking the Congress to pass legislation to prohibit the late-term abortion of children who can feel pain in the mother’s womb.” (There’s no data on when a fetus can “feel pain.” Anti-choice activists seem to have picked the 20-week marker out of thin air. This is an invented fact, a myth, from the same conspiracy theorists and liars who told us Planned Parenthood was selling baby parts.) “Let us work together to build a culture that cherishes innocent life.”

U.S. Allows Visas for Child Brides

Immigration officials are approving visas that allow men to bring girls as young as 13 into the United States as their wives or fiancées:

The government in recent years, has approved “thousands of petitions filed by Americans seeking spouse or fiancé visas for children born abroad.” Judicial Watch said that in the last decade more than 8,500 petitions for spousal entry into the U.S. involved minors, according to government figures included in a Senate Homeland Security report released this month. “In an overwhelming number of the cases girls were the younger party and in some there were ‘significant age differences,’ Senate investigators found. Two were only 13 years old, 38 were 14 years old, 269 were 15 years old, and 1,768 were 16. The remaining 6,609 were 17 years old.” Among the “disturbing” facts, Judicial Watch said, is the agency’s approval of a 71-year-old American citizen’s visa request for a 17-year-old spouse from Guatemala. In another, the agency granted a 14-year-old U.S. citizen’s petition for a 48-year-old spouse from Jamaica. USCIS also rubber-stamped 149 applications involving a minor with an adult spouse or fiancé over the age of 40, Judicial Watch said.

– U.S. lets in thousands of kids to be married

This is part of a worldwide problem of sexual slavery in which girls are forced into “marriages” with men who rape and exploit them: 

NPR: Thousands Of Young Women In U.S. Forced Into Marriage

New York Times: America’s Child Marriage Problem

PRI:  The US has a forced child marriage problem, too

Thomson Reuters Foundation: Forced Marriage in America: many women don’t know their rights, fear to claim them

TruthDig: Forced Marriage of Children Happens in America, Too

CBS News: The “ugly” problem of child marriage in the US

Al Jazeera: “Till Death Do Us Part: The Forgotten US Victims of Forced Marriage”

Girls Not Brides: It Does Happen “Here”: Forced and Child Marriage in the US

PBS: Uncovering the Problem of Forced Marriage in the United States

Good Housekeeping: Child Marriage Still Happens in America

Vice News: There Are No States in the US that Outlaw Child Marriage and the accompanying in-depth video

Washington Post:  Why can 12-year-olds still get married in the United States?

Learn more at GIRLS NOT BRIDES.