Category: Full Frontal Feminism

The year of the women

~ susie ~ 4 Comments
https://twitter.com/abgutman/status/1060010257827545088

Solidarity

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Every woman I know was watching yesterday. And they all felt like this:

The power of the moment — the reason that people cried in airplane seats and called into C-SPAN to tell their own stories of sexual assault — was in seeing Ford tell a story of private pain before a massive public audience.

It was to see her speak, without knowing yet who would believe her.

“16A: Crying. 14B: Crying. 17C: Weeping,” Ron Lieber, a New York Times columnist, wrote on Twitter from a flight headed from New York to Salt Lake City, listing the reactions as passengers watched the hearing on seat-back televisions. “I am one of the criers.”

Good for her

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Did you know they wanted her to sit at the same table with the guy who tried to rape her?

https://twitter.com/alexisgoldstein/status/1042230444664778757
https://twitter.com/DebraMessing/status/1042207808001732608

Cosby finally convicted

~ susie

NORRISTOWN, Pennsylvania—Bill Cosby was found guilty of all charges in a sexual assault trial by a jury on Thursday after 14 hours of deliberations.

Cosby was convicted of three counts of aggravated indecent assault for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, home in January 2004.

Cosby, 80, faces up to 30 years in prison for the conviction on all counts. Even before the verdict, Cosby suffered an unimaginable fall from his perch as “America’s Dad” on the hit The Cosby Show in the 1980s after rising to prominence as one of America’s first mainstream black comedians.

Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele immediately moved to revoke Cosby’s bail following the conviction, prompting an explosion from Cosby.

“Your Honor, he has the wealth to go any place in the world,” Steele told Judge Stephen O‘Neill. “He’s got a plane.”

“He doesn’t have a plane, you asshole!” Cosby yelled back (he sold the plane sometime ago, according to trial testimony.)

He’ll be wearing an ankle monitor until sentencing, our local news reported.

TX anti-masturbation law proceeds

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

State Capitol

Gee, it all sounds so… oppressive, doesn’t it?

A proposed bill in Texas that would impose a fine for male masturbation is making its way through the state’s legislature.

House Bill 4260, called the “Man’s Right to Know Act,” would punish male masturbation with a $100 fine, and require men who want Viagra to be subject to a rectal exam.

The bill, filed earlier this year by Texas legislator Rep. Jessica Farrar (D), was referred to the House State Affairs Committee on Tuesday.

By focusing on male masturbation, the proposed legislation is an obvious attempt to satirize and draw attention to the unreasonable and dangerous policy proposals concerning women’s reproductive freedom coming from the Republican Party.

Commenting on her bill, Rep. Farrar told mysanantonio.com:

A lot of people find the bill funny. What’s not funny are the obstacles that Texas women face every day, that were placed there by legislatures making it very difficult for them to access healthcare.

Farrar is a vocal abortion rights activist, with a long record of opposing legislation in Texas hostile to women’s reproductive freedom.

The Statesman reports the details of the new legislation prohibiting unregulated male masturbation:

The bill calls “masturbatory emissions” an “act against an unborn child, and failing to preserve the sanctity of life.”

The bill also contains provisions that would also put restrictions on vasectomies, Viagra prescriptions and colonoscopies, including:

  • The state must create an informational booklet called “A Man’s Right to Know” that contains information and illustrations on the benefits of and concerns about those three treatments. A man must review the booklet before going through with any of them.

  • A man must receive a rectal exam and an MRI of his rectum before any of the three treatments.

  • A man would not be able sue a doctor for refusing to provide those treatments or another procedure if the procedure violates the doctor’s “personal, moralistic, or religious beliefs.”

  • A doctor must obtain consent from the man before providing the treatment, and the man may give it only if he waits at least 24 hours after the doctor’s visit.

  • The state must establish a registry of nonprofit organizations and hospitals that provide abstinence counseling, a supervising physician for “masturbatory emissions,” and semen storage.

  • “Masturbatory emissions” must be stored for the wife for conception.

Is the DCCC screwing over a first-time female candidate?

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

When Tanzie Youngblood announced her congressional bid for New Jersey’s 2nd District, she thought she’d easily win the support of local, and even national, Democrats . A year with a record number of women running for office, a promising blue wave and the #MeToo movement seemed perfect for her progressive campaign. Continue reading “Is the DCCC screwing over a first-time female candidate?” →

Another allegation: Woman says Al Franken grabbed her butt

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

If we got rid of every member of Congress who grabs women, we won’t have any left. I don’t know how he recovers from this allegation, especially since he was already a senator when it happened:

A woman says Sen. Al Franken inappropriately touched her in 2010, telling CNN that he grabbed her buttocks while taking a photo at the Minnesota State Fair.

It is the first allegation of improper touching by Franken, who is a Democrat, while he was in office. It comes just days after Leeann Tweeden, a local radio news anchor in California, said that Franken forcibly kissed and groped her in 2006, when Franken was a comedian.
Franken has since issued an apology to Tweeden and faces a potential investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee.

Lindsay Menz, a 33-year-old woman who now lives in Frisco, Texas, reached out to CNN on Thursday hours after Tweeden made her story public. Menz said she wanted to share an “uncomfortable” interaction that left her feeling “gross.”

According to Menz, she attended the Minnesota State Fair with her husband and father in the summer of 2010, almost two years after Franken was elected to the Senate. Her father’s small business was sponsoring a local radio booth, and she spent the day meeting various elected officials, political candidates and celebrities and taking photos with them as they stopped by the booth.

When Franken walked in, Menz and her husband, who also spoke with CNN, said they recognized him right away. Menz said she had a brief and cordial exchange with the senator.
Then, as her husband held up her phone and got ready to snap a photo of the two of them, Franken “pulled me in really close, like awkward close, and as my husband took the picture, he put his hand full-fledged on my rear,” Menz said. “It was wrapped tightly around my butt cheek.”

“It wasn’t around my waist. It wasn’t around my hip or side. It was definitely on my butt,” she said, recalling that the brazen act lasted three or four seconds. “I was like, oh my God, what’s happening.”

“He reached around her and kind of pulled her into him,” said her husband Jeremy Menz, who didn’t see what happened behind his wife. “He pulled her in and pushed his head against her head. It was over pretty quick.”

Lindsay Menz told CNN that she walked away as soon as the photo was taken, without saying anything to the then-first term senator. When she reconnected with her husband moments later, she told him: “He totally grabbed my butt.” Jeremy Menz described that conversation the same way to CNN.

Timing is everything

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

#NWGA Police: KSU student arrested for felony rape https://t.co/twhLC5YR6i

I was thinking about a C&L post I did a few years ago, where I mentioned that something like 80, 90% of the women I knew had been sexually assaulted or raped.

I didn’t think that was controversial. Silly me! The commenters went crazy, saying I was making it up “to push a feminist agenda.” I was called an unscrupulous liar, and these men were furious with me.

But I wasn’t lying.

In the past few weeks, you might have gotten some sense of just how commonly women are sexually abused. I guess I was just ahead of my time. Again.