there's a war.

it's the last day of my june challenge, and you all are about to read what i have to say about the supreme court ruling today and other tidbits of what's going on in the war on women.

this is been a trigger warning for violence against women, rape, misogyny, and mental health. 

SUPREME COURT GOES WITH HOBBY LOBBY

basically, what happened is that the supreme court voted 5-4 that hobby lobby and other private businesses do not have to offer women birth control as a part of their healthcare benefits.

the five justices that voted for this, they were... well... they were men.

so what this means is that if you're a woman and you work a private corporation, that corporation has the right to say, "nahhh, i don't really think i can offer you specific safe contraceptives and birth control and you know, like, basic human rights. because it's against my religious beliefs. you'll have to pay for them elsewhere, even though they're really really expensive and you probably can't afford them. sorry, that's just my religious bieliefs!"

i don't want to get into a religious belief debate. i am a religious person.

there is nothing wrong with religious expression and freedom.

but there IS something wrong when your religious expression and freedom stomps on my right to have safe and affordable healthcare.

while this whole ruling is an issue for religious freedom and expression, it's also an issue about women and what we can and can't do with our bodies. because, you know, hobby lobby says that BIRTH CONTROL IS BAD AND WE WILL NOT LET WOMEN HAVE IT but men can have vasectomies fully covered in their insurance plan. viagra is also covered, so if you're a man and you can't get it up, never fear! men can have as much as sex as they want, but if a woman has sex and she wants birth control, NAH, THAT'S AGAINST OUR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.

tweet of the day:

i've often wondered, as have many of my feminist friends, what the world would be like if we regulated men's penises the way that they regulate women's vaginas.

MY VAGINA IS ANGRY, PEOPLE.

supreme court justice ginsburg gave a pretty scalding dissent about the supreme court's ruling today and how it's a slippery slope that we're falling into.

i mean, in america we already don't allow women to have total control over their bodies and their health choices, but now the supreme court has made it loud and clear and obvious that this is happening and that this behaviour is going to continue.

if you want to read the highlights of justice ginsburg's dissent and what she has to say about the supreme court's ruling, click here.

another thing that makes this whole issue really upsetting, besides the fact that women aren't getting the healthcare that they need and that corporations are being given more rights than women, is the fact that these corporations are saying that women can find birth control and contraceptives elsewhere while simultaneously working to shut down those places.

you know, like texas closing all but five abortion clinics in the entire state. the state of texas is the size of most of europe. this is problematic.

and last but not least, hobby lobby and other private corporations that are refusing to cover birth control are forgetting this: birth control and contraception lead to fewer abortions. isn't that your goal? fewer abortions?

MRA CONVENTIONS

i'm a part of my college's women's and gender studies facebook group, and a nice guy named adam (not my boyfriend) posted an article in the group about how michigan held its first MRA (men's rights activist) convention. it was originally in detroit, but they moved to a different location after feminist protested it. the MRAs then threatened the protesting women with physical abuse, rape, and death.

because that sends a good message about your convention and what kind of stuff you're going to talk about.

i highly suggest you read the entire article here.

the people that ran this convention attacked feminism left and right. some of the highlights, besides the rape jokes that got much applause, were quotes such as this:

"rape on college campuses was a myth perpetrated by man-haters, and the concept of rape culture, how society can tacitly approve of or rationalise sexual assault, was 'baseless moral panic.'"

i don't know, man, i think that one in four women being sexually assaulted on college campuses isn't baseless moral panic. or that one in six women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime.

i think that's a BIG BIG PROBLEM.

the men (and women) that held this MRA convention came with serious issues. they came with issues about women being favoured over men in divorce situations. they talked about how boys are falling behind in the education system.

these are all very important issues.

but these are issues that come from the patriarchal society that we live in, not women being in power. 

women account for less than fifteen percent of CEOs in fortune 500 businesses, we own less than ten percent of the world's land but account for over fifty percent of the world's labour, and the united states is one of the most drastically under-represented countries in the world when it comes to women in places of political power.

women being in power is not the issue, especially not when men are voting against our rights.

MISOGYNY DISGUISED AS MENTAL ILLNESS

this is my section about the UCSB shooter.

i've wanted to write about this for a long time, but i'll try to keep it snappy before i break a plate.

i was in petoskey for a wedding when i heard about the events that happened at UCSB and i was very very very very angry.

i was angry that he went on a mass killing spree. i was angry that the police thought that he was a "nice boy" and completely ignored all of his misogynist rantings on youtube. i was even more angry that other men supported him. (that is flat out disgusting, and in fact, a terror campaign against women.)

but what really pissed me off, what really was the big clincher, was that the media wrote him off as mentally ill.

as a mentally ill person, i find that insulting, disgusting, and very troubling.

the UCSB shooter was a misogynist. in his videos he talked about how women would not pay attention to him and would not sleep with him. he had an entire manifesto about it. and when these women (that he didn't even approach, by the way) did not pay attention to him or offer him sex, he went on a shooting spree.

LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING. WOMEN DO NOT OWE ANYBODY ANYTHING. THEY DO NOT OWE ANYBODY SEX. THEY DO NOT OWE ANYBODY. ANYTHING. WOMEN DO NOT EXIST FOR YOU. THEY EXIST FOR THEMSELVES. IS THIS FUCKING CLEAR?

the UCSB shooter felt entitled to women. and when he did not have any women, he felt slighted and unhappy that these women would not flock to him and have sex with him. so he killed them.

yet he's being called mentally ill.

you cannot pretend that misogyny is mental illness. one in four people in america are mentally ill and sixty percent of them don't receive the help that they need because of the stigma associated with having a mental health disorder. that stigma spreads when we label people like the UCSB shooter as mentally ill instead of saying blatantly that he was a misogynist.

there are people that will claim that he "snapped" after being rejected by women. first off, he wasn't rejected by women because he didn't actually ask any of them out or to have sex with any of them, he expected them to come to him simply because he was a dude that was a "nice guy". people will claim that this was an isolated incident of a man being upset after rejection.

here's another thing i want to lay down on the table.

if you google men being rejected by women, it gets very terrifying. VERY TERRIFYING.

there are stories about men stabbing women that reject them, men following them home and jeering at them, men running them over with cars, men shooting them.

men killing and hurting women when they are rejected by women. as i said in an earlier blog post this month, this is not an isolated incident, this is a societal problem.

and instead of addressing the societal issue of misogyny, we're going to write it off as mental illness.

PERFECT.

i wore my vagina shirt today for the supreme court ruling. because my vagina is being regulated by religious white men, and i'm fed up with it.

i'm fed up with the war on women. i'm fed up with the war on women in america. i'm fed up with the war on women around the world.

I. AM. FED. UP.

as maureen johnson said on twitter, let's turn all of this anger into action.

let's fight to end the war against women.