Misogynistic violence on the rise

I thought there was already a thread on this but maybe I just remembered people posting on the theme--sadly, it does keep cropping up.

So the latest mass killer turns out to have been yet another little loser shit enraged by women or at least one woman whom he pursued unsuccessfully--and in retaliation for her refusal, killed.

Democracy Now video:

Soraya Chemaly on Mass Shootings: “Focus Should Be on Boys & Men Who Can’t Take No for an Answer”

Focus should have been on these men as men long ago--for as long as they focussed on women to maul and kill.

Not sure when one would say this began (the 1989 Montreal massacre is one possible milestone), but I think we can all see these particular events, that are fuelled in greatest part or entirely specifically by misogyny and directed mainly against women (as far as circumstances permit choice of victims to the perpetrators) are accumulating at what looks like increasing pace.

Indeed, when I googled right now to look up and confirm info about some of the past events, I was shocked to discover how many there are I don't remember hearing about at all--for example, this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_de_Janeiro_school_shooting

A boy who survived the attack said that Oliveira selectively shot to kill girls while shooting boys only to immobilize them. Ten of the twelve children killed were girls.6

Was 2011 too early to start talking about all the effed-up men? Or 1991, when another "crazy Texan" slaughtered 23 people, of which 14 women, and that bypassing men in order to get at women whom he also swore at and called bitches and vipers as he was killing them?

Are the Asian deficits of women too complicated to talk about as mass murders perpetrated by one gender against another?

TOO MANY MEN

And the orphanages are still filled with girls, women are still trafficked like cattle...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/crete-struggling-shame-rape-murder...

The defence (no matter how pro forma) and the concepts it reveals merit highlighting:

“Both before the investigating magistrate and to me he said repeatedly he was motivated by the desire to have sex,” said Zellios {the defence lawyer}...

What is being described as "having sex" here, the reason I think the mention of this "motivation" is significant, is that it crops up regularly when I happen to read about rape cases in say Croatia or Italy, but not, or not in the same way, in North America. An example burned into my memory was of a case ten years or so ago, when the rapist got leniency because he (said!) he had not had sex in two years. In North America, where rape cases may be prosecuted in no less an appalling and victim-shaming way, you nevertheless don't hear the "well the man wanted to have sex so of course he raped her" actually spelled out in defence of the rapist.

Anecdotally I'd say that's just the attitude anywhere in Southern Europe--men will rape when they "want sex" and this somehow explains everything. But why bring this up in a defence? What does this mention of desire to "have sex" mean, what role does it play in a defence? Let's look at the details of this "having sex" first.

Here is what is understood as such, in this particular instance:

{Yannis Paraskakis, married, father of two} Driving a white sedan – subsequently picked up by road cameras in the area – he admitted ramming into the American twice with the intention of incapacitating her and abducting her. (...)

The woodworker admitted raping the biologist three times outside the cave before throwing her down a ventilation shaft leading down to it.

A coroner ruled the American had died as a result of asphyxiation and was likely to have suffered “a slow and painful death”.

So, "having sex" is; what happens when a man feels "a desire" to "have sex" is:

1. ramming your car into a woman, rendering her (likely) concussed and/or unconscious
2. stuffing her into the car trunk and abducting
3. raping her--not clear whether conscious or not
4. throwing her down the ventilator shaft, breaking her body even more in a vertical fall, and where she will choke to death "slowly and painfully"

The lunatic bizarreness, the downright obscenity of this recurring "defence motif" is particularly salient in examples like these. But it's no less lunatic and obscene no matter what wounds the victim suffers, whether they live or die.

That said, I think there is more to this case than can be gleaned from this article. The sheer rage of the attack, the means and the execution, and--I will claim--the choice of the victim are special. He picked her out as a non-Greek (find me a 59-year old Cretan woman who goes jogging and I'll send you a cake), that's one. And non-Greeks, especially jogging ones, are almost by definition of some other, more privileged class than Greek carpenters.

Quite apart from whatever "feminine charms" this 59-year old woman may have had for a 27-year old married man, the sight of her enjoying herself outdoors was--again I will claim--possibly frustrating to this sad little prick who lately quit his job and spent time cruising around in his car.

The defence puts up "sex" as the motivation, but I have to wonder, just how skilled people get at "merely" incapacitating people by "ramming" their car into them, how could you be sure you didn't kill them on the spot? Sure, maybe he would have fucked a corpse too. But then it seems even odder to call it a "desire to have sex".

All this to point out, again, that the fuel here stinks of hatred and rage, of misogyny. There is a background to this--some of it visible. The perpetrator may be married, "a family man", but he's an ugly little shrimp, jobless, worthless. His victim was an athletic woman, an uppity foreign woman exercising her non-Greek foreign woman freedom and advantage under his incel-like nose. Enough Greek men and similar have wanted to teach me a lesson for existing as I do, that I believe I recognise the situation. To bring her down he first had to mow her down with his car. And after he raped her, he killed her, deliberately left to die. Ugly little jobless worthless shrimp, capable of envisaging this attack as the result of "a desire to have sex", are not capable of facing their victims.

Ah. Of course:

Local media reports that the suspect had a history of attacking women. Action had been taken against him by another woman that stated that the suspect had struck her and injured her with his car at Gerani. Defence lawyer Pantelis Zelios said that his client had admitted to hassling women in the past.

https://neoskosmos.com/en/141867/suzanne-eatons-killer-says-he-ran-over-scientis...

ETA: there are other links with details further confirming the picture of a lifelong misogynist, habitual harasser of women, with a "miserable" (his own word) life.

When will twisting balls become a "rough sex" fad?

The fatal, hateful rise of choking during sex

>4 LolaWalser: As Jian would tell you -- that model of modern masculinity whom all male adolescents should learn from -- the choking is all in fun, isn't it?

In #2 someone overlooked the obvious defence that a 59-year-old women dressed for jogging and out alone is asking for it. Some years ago I was subbing in a grade 9 civics class (I think it was) and left speechless when a boy unabashedly made a similar claim. I realized suddenly that I was living a very sheltered life, believing that some progress was being made.

The stats are shocking--90% rise (of deaths ensuing...) in a decade; a woman strangled "for sex" in the UK every two weeks?! That's a bloody epidemic.

In #2 someone overlooked the obvious defence that a 59-year-old women dressed for jogging and out alone is asking for it.

Sadly, I'm afraid that's pretty much taken for granted in places like that. Women existing in public spaces is still highly problematic. It always floors me--and god knows I've been discussing this crap with them for years--how my familiars still automatically go the "she shouldn't have been doing X, Y or Z" route. Then I remind them of all the times a woman wasn't doing X, Y or Z and still ended up beaten, raped or dead. But it's treading quicksand.

Another likely misogynistic massacre:

https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/police_sabre-wielding_kuopio_suspect_a_finnis...

"Most victims female"--one dead, and not specified how many among the nine injured.

Terrible. I first noticed reports of this sort of thing two weeks ago in Italy... to think it may continue for months is just unbearable.

Coronavirus is fuelling domestic violence

... Reports from China suggest the coronavirus has already caused a significant spike in domestic violence. Local police stations saw a threefold increase in cases reported in February... “According to our statistics, 90% of the causes of violence are related to the Covid-19 epidemic,” Wan told Sixth Tone, an English-language magazine based in China.

A similar story is playing out in America. A domestic violence hotline in Portland, Oregon, says calls doubled last week. And the national domestic violence hotline is hearing from a growing number of callers whose abusers are using Covid-19 to further control and isolate them. “Perpetrators are threatening to throw their victims out on the street so they get sick,” the hotline’s CEO told Time. “We’ve heard of some withholding financial resources or medical assistance.” ...

In Austria, too, domestic violence is a rising concern during the Covid-19 crisis. The government has raised the budgets of the hot lines and created more places for women and their children.

Schools here are basically closed right now except for day care for children who can't be cared for at home. Only about 1% are using this. However, they will continue this care through what would have been the Easter holiday. Besides families where the parents are working in health jobs, food stores, this is offered

aber auch Familien, „wo es zu Hause eng wird“, so Faßmann. „Bevor andere Dinge passieren, Stichwort Gewalt in der Familie, ist es natürlich vernünftiger, ein Kind in eine Schule zu bringen, um dort Luft holen zu können.“

also for families 'where it gets too narrow at home' said the education minister. 'Before other things happen such as violence in the family, it is of course more sensible to bring the child to school to catch your breath.'

(double post)

Women and children first... :(

This is posted also in Pro & Con, sorry for the multiple posting but I know many avoid that group:

Published today, by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague, my emphasis in bold:

Male supremacism and the Hanau terrorist attack: between online misogyny and far-right violence

...

While this connection between white supremacy, anti-Semitism, and anti-feminism is new to the German discussion, it gained increased attention in international media after several recent attacks in North America. Since 2014, a number of attacks have been committed by men motivated by resentment at their lack of romantic or sexual relationships, the core of a misogynist ideology that has developed through online “incel” (“involuntarily celibate”) communities that also tend toward conspiracy theories and nihilism. Earlier in 2019, anti-feminism and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories also played a role in the far-right terrorist attack in Germany targeting a synagogue in Halle. The shooter blamed low birth rates in the West on feminism, intertwining this with a perceived threat from mass immigration, a common conspiracy theory known as the “Great Replacement”.

...

There is a danger of trivializing the relevance of how misogyny, male entitlement, and white supremacy are deeply linked within a violent belief system.

...the terminology of misogyny and how it shapes online groups is more complex than has been portrayed in various media outlets. ...

Blanket-labelling any violent misogynist as incel does not help when we are trying to understand misogyny and its potentially deadly consequences. Misogyny and sexual entitlement, while present in both incel forums and in the manifesto, are much more far-reaching—both throughout broader society, and online cultures.

A prominent manifestation of this is the so-called ‘Manosphere’. The ‘Manosphere’ is a conglomerate of misogynist blogs, websites, wikis, and forums that currently includes several broader groups: Next to the aforementioned incels and pickup artists (i.e. men who try to manipulate and seduce women), there are also men’s rights activists (who claim to advocate for the rights of fathers, divorced men, and men falsely accused of sexual assault). They are deeply anti-feminist and focus on exposing the ‘evils’ of feminism to justify their misogyny. ...

Lastly, there are also male supremacists who are not associated with one of these organized ideologies; just like “white supremacy”, “male supremacy” is an overarching belief system. ...

...the idea of male entitlement goes far beyond the realms of the ‘manosphere’. In mainstream discourse, ‘Nice Guy’ and ‘friendzone’ narratives feed into this same sense of entitlement. The idea that women owe men sex or a relationship because they were ‘nice’ to women, befriended women, or showed basic human decency towards women speaks to how entrenched entitlement to women is among men. Male anger at women for saying no to a date, sex, or an interaction on the street is something that pervades societies around the globe. This misogynistic sexual entitlement lies not just in the far corners of the internet, or in the manifestos of terrorists, but in our streets and in the daily lives of women. This is evidenced by the testimony shared by survivors of sexual assault and harassment in the wake of #metoo, which detail accounts of many whose careers, mental health, and personal safety had been restricted through unwanted sexual advances. In an even more horrifying vein, this societal tendency is also evident in a continuous occurrence of violent attacks against women who rejected the sexual advances of men. Women have been killed for saying no to a date for the prom, ignoring catcalls, and for not wanting to share their name and phone number.

...

Following the Toronto attack, incel hubs on platforms such as Reddit almost doubled in subscriber numbers, and recent studies have found migration to more extreme and increasingly violent forums. ...
...

Second, and potentially more harmful is the media framing of inceldom as simultaneously exotic and ‘weird’ as well as potentially dangerous. The focus on incels as strange outcasts of ‘normal’ society tends to obscure that misogyny and male supremacism do not originate in and are not exclusive to obscure corners of the internet. Misogyny—like racism—has always been a part of our societies. It has always been violent, with misogynist terrorism, rape, and intimate partner violence as just the tip of an iceberg of persistent male entitlement. It goes much deeper into the realms of sexual harassment, gender pay gaps, and daily life practices that still put child rearing, un(der)paid care labor, and household work squarely as the responsibilities of women.

Accurate labelling of the ideologies at stake is one element required for a deeper understanding of the societal dynamics and issues on which the success of extremist groups of all couleur are built. In order to avoid trivializing how deeply misogyny, male entitlement, and white supremacy remain entrenched in our societies, we have to go past any simplistic use of the incel-label. Instead we must continue to ask the hard questions: how and why it seems so intuitive to some young men to connect anti-Semitism, racism, and misogyny into a worldview that—in their view—demands violent activism?

Again, the media coverage and the overwhelming sort of public chatter around these attacks bothers me terribly. One, there's the issue of hiding information, and obfuscating information, as in downplaying misogyny as the motive to the point of distracting from the fact that the targets and the vast majority of the victims are women.

Two, there's the issue of the type of "analysis" getting imposed, which is that these are absolutely unique lonely weirdos--this is where labelling them all one handy label comes into play--stick the label--dismiss as special, known problem, with no relevance to the larger context.

It serves to isolate their misogyny as THE misogyny, and thereby actually protect the vast majority, includng Jordan Peterson's millions of followers, as having nothing to do with this.

Another link about this precedent-setting case (not just for Canada but North America, I think?)--but note the message of the article in >12 LolaWalser: about the "incel" labelling:

Stabbing attack at North York massage parlour was ‘incel’ terrorism, police say

They mention the Danforth killer from 2018 and as I said before, FINALLY misogyny is getting acknowledged in that case too, my bolding:

Material linked to the Santa Barbara killing was also found within the digital files of Faisal Hussain, who killed Julianna Kozis, 10, and Reese Fallon, 18, and injured 13 others when he opened fire on Danforth Avenue in July 2018, before fatally shooting himself. At the time, Toronto police said Hussain had no affiliation with any radical ideology or terrorist organizations.

This has to change. Toronto saw TWO mass murders targeting women in a SINGLE YEAR, and people still insisted on treating those massacres as "general", direction-less "tragedies" likely to affect any "people" equally.

No. There is a growing population of men (again see >12 LolaWalser:--before Reddit cleaned up its groups a little, memberships in extreme misogynist subreddits more than DOUBLED after every massacre) who would like, or are actually planning, to murder women.

Misogyny isn't just a common element in practically every right-wing ideology and movement one can name; it's a murderous ideology in itself.

Until recently, attacks by people of colour or certain faiths have been more readily dubbed terrorist acts while extreme misogynist violence perpetuated by white men is often attributed to mental health issues, she said. This framing detracts from the reality that extreme anti-woman hate “exists right here, at ‘home’, in North America,” she said.

“By calling these acts ‘terrorism’ we are beginning to shift the narrative and recognize a problem for what it is,” Little said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which analyzes U.S. crime trends, began tracking incels as a hate ideology in 2018 and considers them part of the “online male supremacist ecosystem.”

Finally. Finally male supremacism enters the space of public discourse, public consciousness. But at what cost.

They actually gave this asshole and his shit a platform on television. Fuck you too, Colbert.

'Anti-feminist' lawyer suspected of murdering US judge's son may have killed before

...In more than 2,000 pages of often misogynistic, racist writings, Den Hollander had criticized Salas’s life story of being abandoned by her father and raised by her poor mother as “the usual effort to blame a man and turn someone into super girl”.

Den Hollander filed multiple lawsuits challenging what he saw as unfair treatment of men. He had brought a series of unsuccessful lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of “ladies’ night” promotions at bars and nightclubs.

The eye-catching litigation, and Den Hollander’s willingness to appear on television, had earned him spots on The Colbert Report and MSNBC. Den Hollander’s body, along with a package addressed to Salas, was found in Sullivan county, New York, after he reportedly shot himself.

Another femicide, and with a racist component--six Asian women murdered, along with a white woman and a man... and the killer, the usual white male, is already getting mansplained as a pitiable victim of sexual frustrations:

County Authorities Suggest Atlanta Shooter Was Simply Too Tempted By Womanly Ways

The massage parlors were “a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate,” Baker told reporters.

Yes, and that poor boy's whole life has now been destroyed because of it.

"he had a bad day" o_0

I couldn't believe the language. "Fed up" "had a bad day"

I'm fed up with patriarchy. Please tell me who I can murder? Ugh.

>19 sparemethecensor: "I'm fed up with patriarchy. Please tell me who I can murder? Ugh."

Surely according to the arguments in the media, you should pre-emptively murder all misogynists to "eliminate" the "temptation" to murder them at some hypothetical future point?

The coverage of this mass shooting is enraging me. It is all focusing on the fact that 6 of the women were Asian and nowhere at all on the fact that this attack was grounded in misogyny and dehumanization of women. Perhaps the shooter was targeting women of Asian descent, or perhaps Asian women just happened to work in greater numbers at the places he was targeting. Regardless, this was still a hate crime: a hate crime against women. And nowhere in the coverage is that mentioned. The assumption is that of course he would shoot women. It is so normal for women to be the target of men's hatred and violence that it doesn't even bear mentioning. Would there even be news coverage if there had been no racist angle?

>21 sturlington: There's a witness who claims the murderer shouted "I am going to kill all the Asians".

Personally, I find intersectionality a more useful feminist concept than divide and rule. It was a hate crime that targeted Asian women who are both Asian and women. Understanding intersectional violence allows us to see both racism and misogyny and support victims of both. The media, and the powers that be, prefer divide and rule but we don't have to surrender to their tactics.

To no one's surprise, they found that the cop who said the murderer had "a bad day" had a social media profile full of anti-Asian racist slurs. At this point every cop, every DA, every prison guard needs to be evaluated for racism before they're allowed to continue in their job. Or we could just defund the police & fire people like that bastard before he even had the chance to open his racist mouth.

>22 spiralsheep: I agree. It appears that the victims were targeted because they were both Asian AND women. I feel like in the media coverage, the fact that they were also targeted because they were women is being completely erased.

>24 sturlington:

And there's also the sex work aspect...

I had seen, even before this massacre, a datum that in anti-Asian crimes the targets are mostly women--there's a refreshed version for example here:

There were 3,800 anti-Asian racist incidents, mostly against women, in past year (NBC News)

... It’s a significantly higher number than last year's count of about 2,800 hate incidents nationwide over the span of five months. Women made up a far higher share of the reports, at 68 percent, compared to men, who made up 29 percent of respondents. The nonprofit does not report incidents to police. ...

According to the data, Asian women report hate incidents 2.3 times more than men. A further examination of the submitted reports showed that in many cases, the verbal harassment that women received reflected the very intersection of racism and sexism.

One Chinese American woman reported that a “man on the subway slapped my hands, threatened to throw his lighter at me, then called me a ‘c---- b----.’ He then said to ‘get the f--- out of NYC.’” Another woman, who’s Filipino American, reported that while in a Washington, D.C., metro station with her boyfriend, a man shouted "Chinese b----" at her, coughed at the couple and physically threatened them.

Jeung emphasized that women have always dealt with harassment from men and public safety issues more broadly. But the pandemic, he said, has provided another “excuse” for people to target Asian women. ...

>25 LolaWalser: "And there's also the sex work aspect... "

Red Canary Song have a statement here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_Q0mFJnivTZL5fcCS7eUZn9EhOJ1XHtFBGOGqVaUY_8/

Spare me the excuses for the latest Angry White Guy's killing spree (Guardian)

When police tell us the man who confessed to killing eight people around Atlanta was having ‘a bad day’ it goes way beyond one cop making an idiotic comment...

It comes as no surprise that Jessica Valenti is the author of the first op-ed I've seen explicitly connecting misogyny, racism and hypersexualization of women of color, and religious fundamentalism's teachings about women and sex in the wake of the Atlanta shootings. This is on NY Times, so may be behind a paywall for you.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/22/opinion/atlanta-shooting-women-violence.html?...

>28 sturlington: I can't read Jessica Valenti's NYT op-d over here but it's always good to hear a mainstream white feminist is using her platform to promote the voices of marginalised women instead of building her personal brand and career on the bodies of dead women of colour. So which Asian and Asian American feminists whose work Valenti is recycling did she mention by name?

>30 spiralsheep: among other sources she directly points to Tanya Chen: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tanyachen/asian-women-fetish-racist-atlanta...

and fellow NYT Columnist Davey Alba:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/19/technology/how-anti-asian-activity-online-set...

>31 southernbooklady: Thank you! I'm always looking to expand my reading list.

>31 southernbooklady: And Tanya Chen's article leads to academic papers available online.

Robin Zheng paper:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-american-philosophical-as...

Audrey Yap links:

https://audreysh.wordpress.com/research/

The Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa has just reported a second case of a girl murdered by a close family member. I can't link to it as it is an e-mail alert, not a website, but it begins, "For the second time in one month, a girl in Sudan has been killed by an immediate family member. On April 3, 2021, Aida Al-Mahdi, 19 years old, was killed by her brother Al-Nour, who stabbed her 6 times and slashed at her until her head was separated from her body, according to sources close to the family in the village of Tawal, Raheid Al-Bardi, South Darfur." It then gives a link to the story below about the previous murder.

'Ugliest crime': Outcry in Sudan over lack of justice for killing of teenage girl (Guardian)

Death of Samah el-Hadi, allegedly shot by her father, has led to outpouring of women sharing own stories of domestic violence...

Austria has had nine women killed so far this year. In several cases the men were known to the police as violent.

Sorry to go backwards, but I live very close to the Atlanta massage parlor shootings and work for a local county government. We had several media outlets reach out to us re: possible prostitution at several Asian-owned massage parlors in our area. Of course, none had been reported. I was disgusted.

And yes, people are (were?) definitely falling for the addiction line.

>34 John5918: I'm trying to understand how a 13 year old, after shooting herself three times, could still climb in a car and drive over herself. Or at least how the police could even pretend to believe that that was what happened.

Sudan's women flogged in public by young men 'inspired by’ violent social media campaign

Incidents of women being assaulted in Khartoum are on the rise. A number of attacks, including ones where women are whipped, slapped in the face and beaten in public by young men, have been recorded as a violent social media campaign seeking to “punish the immodestly dressed,” takes to the streets...

The attacks kicked off after a hashtag promoting the crackdown on women's freedom went viral on social media... “This heinous campaign was launched by a group of misogynistic, insecure and radical men who can’t tolerate seeing women taking their places in society after the December revolution,” {said} Enass Muzamel, a Sudanese human rights activist...

>35 MarthaJeanne: That makes 11. This was a 50 year old and her 76 year old mother. It was done by her ex-boyfriend.

Afghans bury their dead after dozens of girls killed in school blasts

#JUSTICEFORHAMDI: DECISION REACHED BY THE COURT (Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa)

The late Hamdi Mohamed Farah was a student who was murdered in September 2020. She was invited to the site of the crime by a man who, according to local media reports, she thought to be her friend. Upon reaching the site, a group of assailants brutally gangraped Hamdi and pushed her off a six-floor building in Mogadishu's Wabari district...

Following the #JusticeforHamdi advocacy event on the 20th of March, and the social media outcry that followed, the Chief of Banadir Regional Court, Hon. Abdikhadar Mohamed Hassan, called one of the lawyers who had taken part in the campaign, asking him to bring the family to the court. Both Hamdi’s father and her sister were taken to court to meet the Chief who briefed them about the status of their case, while also assuring them that justice would be seriously pursued, and that the perpetrators would be held accountable. This was first time the family members were allowed to physically meet with court officials and raise their concerns, at which point, they were assured that, “your case is still under process and we will ensure that it we be justly and fairly prosecuted, we are waiting for further evidence to be submitted especially with the medical papers and witness testimonies,” by Abdikhadar Mohamed Hassan, Chief of Banadir Regional Court...

Normally there would be little point in noting every new such incident in places like Pakistan, but it seems important that they think the violence is getting worse:

Hundreds of men in Pakistan investigated over mass sexual assault on woman

In broad daylight, the men picked up the young woman and tossed her between them, tearing her clothes and assaulting and groping her.

The woman registered a case against 300 to 400 unidentified persons with Lahore police, according to the case report seen by the Guardian.

>42 LolaWalser: Wow! that is amazing! Also what the Prime Minister said is just — well — so crazy...

UK far right promoting sexual violence against women, report finds (GUardian)

Sexual violence is increasingly being promoted by the British far right, according to new analysis documenting how misogyny is used to steer individuals towards adopting racist and antisemitic views. Investigators found that pro-rape comments were “not uncommon” among the UK extreme right and that a culture has taken root that endorses sexual violence. Analysing misogyny and anti-feminist channels on the messaging app Telegram, a key online platform for the far right, they found sexual assault was a “prominent theme”...

Has anything gotten better in the meantime? No. It got worse. Afghanistan afghanistans to the max and India indians and in places like the UK (England and Wales):

Violence against women and girls at ‘epidemic’ levels, UK police say (July 23, 2024)

Crimes including rape, domestic abuse, stalking and harassment increased by 37% in the past five years, the report found – a “staggering” increase that has prompted the UK Home Office to classify VAWG as “a national threat to public safety.”

Note the date. But not a week later when a 17-year-old male shit went out to murder little girls gathered for a Taylor Swift dance event, nobody, but nobody that I saw was coming out and calling this a misogynistic massacre, another one, yet another one, following god knows how many. Most weren't even calling the victims girls (especially not in the headlines); murdered girls are only "children", just like murdered women in savage death become "people".

Women’s Aid and 76 member organisations issue joint letter to the Home Secretary following the Southport attack demanding it be seen as part of the wider epidemic of violence against women and girls plaguing the country (August 1, 2024)

The violence is male; the violence is terrorism, and long before it gets to murder.

Wow! And I thought it was bad here in the US. I guess we are not the only ones. How awful!!

Taylor Swift's fans as targets again, not two weeks since Southport:

Third teenager arrested over foiled Taylor Swift concert attack in Vienna

Three (so far) maladjusted male shits (but I repeat myself...) who will be described as "radical Islamists", but what they are first and foremost is misogynists. At least one is a recent convert to Islam, like that POS "influencer" Tate. My point is that it's not that the religion made them misogynistic, it's that their misogyny made them choose the religion perceived to give such misogynists free leeway. Just like the converts to Catholicism from the more "liberal" churches choose a system of beliefs that allows them to indulge their misogyny and homophobia etc., not some "new" doctrine.

Murderous misogyny meets Islamist interpretation of jihad: terror targeting "women, children and gay men" (the description of Taylor Swift's fans).

Speaking of targeting children... I could swear I posted about this ten (?) years or so ago, but this shit simply won't die. Here we go again:

Draft Iraqi law allowing 9-year-olds to marry would ‘legalise child rape’, say activists

The whole thing is too sickening. Twenty-five women against hundreds of male shits who see nothing wrong with sticking their dicks into 9-year-olds. The destruction of uncountable lives, of persons, before they've begun to live.

In Saddam's Iraq marriage under the age of 18 was forbidden. Again, this is what America's war on Iraq has wrought.

>48 LolaWalser: Not only the rape. Not only the end of schooling for those girls, but they are going to be pregnant and give birth long before their bodies are ready for it.

Reluctantly, and with sorrow, I post this Guardian story:

The 50 women allegedly killed by men in UK so far in 2024

Facebook billionaire plumps down 100% for fascism, normalises hate speech on social media

Calling women ‘household objects’ now permitted on Facebook after Meta updated its guidelines (CNN)

Of course, minorities fare no better:

Users are now allowed to, for example, refer to “women as household objects or property” or “transgender or non-binary people as ‘it,’” according to a section of the policy prohibiting such speech that was crossed out. A new section of the policy notes Meta will allow “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality.”

Attacks on immigrants and statements about certain groups not existing or not "deserving" to exist are also allowed.

But don't you dare be rude about Christofascists--religion is one of the few attributes protected.

People were saying this wouldn't pass--it passed. Remember that this is the direct consequence of American manipulation of the "democratic" Iraq's parliament and insistence that it include religious authorities.

‘The end of women and children’s rights’: outrage as Iraqi law allows child marriage

Under the new law, which was agreed yesterday, religious authorities have been given the power to decide on family affairs, including marriage, divorce and the care of children. It abolishes a previous ban on the marriage of children under the age of 18 in place since the 1950s. (...)

For Shia Muslims, which make up the majority in Iraq, the lowest age of marriage for girls will be nine years old, while for Sunnis, the official age will be 15.(...)

Christian Taliban in all its glory:

Pete Hegseth reposts video that says women shouldn’t be allowed to vote

This reminds that even American women, contrary to the relentless misogynistic propaganda that's been nominally aimed at "white women" since 2016, in every demographic vote SIGNIFICANTLY more for the left (its avatars, such as they may be) than men do.

It's men, white men above all, who gave us fascism in the US and all over the world.

>52 LolaWalser: >53 LolaWalser:

Y'know, as the days pass I find myself becoming ever more misanthropic. We are such a fucked-up species.

The attack on trans women in sports has culminated in the Olympics ban:

https://www.outsports.com/2026/3/26/24131198/ioc-olympics-trans-athletes-women-t...

This is not about sports. It was never about sports.

This is an attack on ALL women, yet another expression of boundless misogyny harnessed by the right wing with the specific goal of disenfranchising women. WOMEN will be (are) tested tried and interrogated, questioned and doubted, categorised and policed. WOMEN's private information, like our bodies, genitals and chromosomes, will be forcibly subjected to investigation and records.

In the US, the proposed bans, such as in the state of Washington, envisage testing high school students. High school girls would be subjected to genital inspections.

This shameful decision, like every discriminatory law aimed at trans women (and non-binary and trans people in general), does the opposite of "protecting" women; it cements the fascist degradation of women and our rights.

The bell tolls for thee.

>55 LolaWalser: This sounds horrible! I am a biological scientist but I have never looked at the data on testosterone and its role in successful competition for either male or female-identified sports. Are there data out there suggesting that transgender females are more successful in female sports? I wonder if it really very solid.

If they are going to do this, they should check men too because some men may have abnormally high levels of testosterone and be at an advantage. Bottom line: people win competitions because 1) they have unique physical characteristics whether they are male or female and 2) because they do the hard work.

How do we distinguish between those 2?? I don't think we can.
We could put all males and females together in one competition and see what happens, then test the winners and losers for testosterone and other hormones.

I know I am getting silly now but I am really curious about this and I think women are at a disadvantage because sports are not as much of an emphasis as they are for men — at least that used to be the case when I grew up. It is probably different now.

End of ramble...

>56 krazy4katz:

For context, first, it's important to understand that it is not about the sports at all. Men obviously don't give a FF about women's sports (exception being, perhaps, beach volleyball), just like they don't give a FF about the brunt of sexual violence and general persecution women suffer at the hands of men. Otherwise women's sports wouldn't be so poorly viewed and ill compensated, nor would women suffer so much violence.

As to your question, to this day there are nothing like clearcut answers on the role of testosterone in sportive success, or any other kind of success. The very mythologisation of testosterone is due primarily to the quaint misogyny of our cultures, where to be male is endowed with magical powers and privilege (hence, anything "male" MUST NEEDS be super-important and super-dominant, somehow).

The complications around the "scientific" picture of what genes and hormones do for sports is why genetic testing was abandoned in the first place, in 1999. It's purely because we're in this fascist moment that this is being pushed, not because science has anything new to say on the subject. Actually, what science DOES have to say is well-expressed by (quoted in the article I linked) Andrew Sinclair, who identified SRY (the gene for whose presence the Olympics will now test women):

“Biological sex is much more complex, with chromosomal, gonadal, hormonal and secondary sex characteristics all playing a role,” Sinclair wrote in August 2025. “Using SRY to establish biological sex is wrong because all it tells you is whether or not the gene is present. It does not tell you how SRY is functioning, whether a testis has formed, whether testosterone is produced and, if so, whether it can be used by the body.”

And not only that--even with men tested genetically and chemically titrated for the presence of X levels of testosterone, there is no predicting on the basis of testosterone alone which man will have a better sportive outcome!

Or woman for that matter --let's not forget testosterone is present in women too. And again, not in any fashion predictive of sportive (or any other kind of) success, that anyone has shown. That said, the previous IOC restriction for trans women based on a statistically-derived testosterone threshold had at least, well, a statistical reasoning. (Statistically, men and women have different levels of testosterone; ergo requiring that trans women do not exceed statistical levels of category "woman" complies with this picture. But it's not any less arbitrary for that.) But testing for a gene is simply ludicrously reductive (see Sinclair).

Setting science, such as it is on the topic, aside: google says that no (or maybe one) trans woman has won an Olympic medal at all in the last 20+ years they were admitted. The "maybe one" was part of a gold-winning football team, hence the "maybe". Clearly she didn't win this medal all on her lonesome:

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/canada-quinn-first-trans-athle...

Statistically, there is no trans dominance in women's sports at all, nor is there any reason to suppose that trans women athletes have advantages somehow "more unfair" than the sheer variation in giftedness/hard work/etc. in the subpopulation of cis-women athletes. For every trans woman athlete who defeated some number of cis-women, there are n-th times more cis-women athletes who defeated other cis-women AND trans women.

People who promote this anti-trans panic seem to picture some massive influx of lying men into women's sports. And toilets. Has this happened?

>57 LolaWalser: Thank you so much for your answer!
This is what I suspected but you have really nailed it. I suspect there is some bias because men tend to be more muscular (if they work out), which is supposedly because of higher testosterone levels, and that has tainted the picture. Of course, as you point out, there is the age-old natural bias against women participating in anything except housework.

And the problem with trans-women using women's bathrooms? Ridiculous!!

ETA: This is an interesting story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imane_Khelif#:~:text=%5B3%5D%20Khelif%20was%20born....

Since no one knows everything about how testosterone is regulated, I wonder if, in addition to genetics, lots of activity at a young age could make a difference. Off the wall but anyway...

I don't know what is the case with Khelif (I'm aware of the awful indignity she was subjected to), medically speaking. But we know that there is a whole array of possible gene expressions/responses to hormones outside the "normal" (average) range. The question is, when this occurs, does it automatically relegate the individual to the opposite or no sex? Why would it?

One thing I'm sure of--being born in freaking Algeria, one of the most bigotedly anti-woman countries on earth, there's no way she has a penis. Otherwise there is no way under the sun her parents would have raised her as a daughter. Crucially, Imane herself seems to have had no problem with this, despite all the ugly comments about her looks, i.e. she is not transgender, she was Assigned Female At Birth and is herself adamant that she's a woman. Therefore she's a woman. (I don't mean that the absence or presence of a penis is essential in abstract for determining sex, just that this is a typical thing that happens.)

Her testosterone levels being higher than the "female" norm is a secondary consideration. Maybe that contributed to her attributes, height, musculature etc. But how is this in essence different to other women whose physicality makes them particularly apt for a certain sport? If we were to follow on the idea that exceptional cases form "unfair advantage", we'd end up with a paradox--tall people should be disqualified from playing basketball, muscular people from lifting weights, fast people from running etc. Michael Phelps, who is frequently brought up, would be disqualified from swimming.

Arguably, the key word here is "exceptional", which brings me back to the scare vision of some massive trans "takeover" of women's sports. But the numbers alone make this impossible! Trans people are a tiny percent of general population, trans athletes even smaller. In January the NY Times reported that out of 510 000 NCAA athletes, fewer than 10 were transgender! I don't know how many of those are trans women, and yes, those are only the "out" people. But seriously, how large can the total number be? On top of this, consider the many (maybe most?) trans people who undergo hormone therapy to bring their appearance more in line with the conventional ideas of "feminine" and "masculine". There is evidence, both in athletes and general population, that trans women undergoing such therapy lose some of their previous fitness. Most that I saw in the athlete examples actually began performing worse than their cis-women counterparts.

in addition to genetics, lots of activity at a young age could make a difference. Off the wall but anyway...

Remember the craziness around African runners and their "unfair" advantages, from (allegedly) higher erythropoietin levels to lifelong adaptation to running? White people were never ever to win another race, except when they do.

The anti-trans panic is no better.

To start with, I don't really get why people are so invested in competitive sport, especially when so few of the fans I see look like they participate in any sport at all. I'm weird, I know, and anyway that's off topic.

But if it's so important to have sex-segregated competition that athletes' eligibility needs to be tested, then (and I'm not promoting this at all!) why not simply test for a Y chromosome? Everyone who has a Y competes as a man; everyone else competes as a woman.

Isn't T a banned performance-enhancing substance? If it's your T and doesn't come from Slippery Simon down the road, what's the issue?

>60 librorumamans: The SRY gene is on the Y chromosome, which is why it is used as a genetic test for male vs. female, with the assumption of course that all females are XX and all males are XY. Sometimes you find people that are genetically XXY. I don't know much about those people but the SRY test would characterize them as male.

ETA: At first glance, it doesn't seem like XXY people would be particularly good candidates for high level athletics. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21116-klinefelter-syndrome

I'm sure many people "back in the day," before genetic testing was available, had different genetic expression patterns than the presumed "ideal" including large variations in testosterone levels. And we don't really know what all the factors are that contribute to success but obviously someone has to win and it isn't only their dedication to the sport. There is also some kind of physiological disposition, I would assume. Whether it's testosterone or something else, why care as long as they are not drugging themselves with sports performance enhancing factors?

>60 librorumamans:

Chromosomes ("genes") alone don't determine sex, this is something that was known before we even solved the DNA structure.

Again, as Andrew Sinclair says: “Biological sex is much more complex, with chromosomal, gonadal, hormonal and secondary sex characteristics all playing a role,”

>61 krazy4katz:

And that's just one type of chromosomal variation that belies the notion of a gender/sex binary. And besides chromosomal variations, there are variations in, for example, sensitivity to hormones, congenital and lifetime exposure and so on.

However, the "scientific" side of the matter is just a distraction. There is never going to exist a scientific answer to the question of "who is a man/woman" because so much more besides genes goes into constructing our selves. It's possible that in the future these two categories will be dissolved and replaced by a novel understanding of humanity.

>62 LolaWalser:

Thanks for reminding me. Biology, let alone endocrinology, is so distant from any field I might claim admission to that that aspect of sex determination had slipped my mind, if it was ever there at all.

Backtracking the links got me to Andrew Sinclair's August '25 article in The Conversation.

>62 LolaWalser: I agree. I believe somewhere in Native American culture there are people who are considered a third sex. I don't remember the details but I heard this a long time ago.

>64 krazy4katz:

Yes, it seems that virtually everyone noticed people outside the conventional binary.

But I think that the future (always assuming our long-term survival...) will be well past numbering, an ocean shift in conceptualisation we can barely glimpse from here. A term that often comes up nowadays is "spectrum", but our language is still so poor in addressing the complexity that comes with that, as opposed to discrete, rigid "boxes".

Another incel attack in Montreal. An armed white man who travelled from Alberta to Montreal ended up dead along with a civilian and a police officer. Another police officer is in hospital. The Albertan left a 100+-page manifesto embracing incel ideology, "violently targeting women".

https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/on-patrol/article/police-officer-and-civilian-ki...

Mia Findlay



Please stop saying they’re monsters.

I can’t hear that word again.

You keep saying “thugs” and “animals”.

When the word you need is “men”

I can’t think of one damn animal,

which marries its own prey.

Which vows to love and protect her,

and sets her on fire one Wednesday.

Please stop saying they are monsters.

Then call him president again.

You cannot look through all those files.

And refuse to say, “It’s men”.

You tell us to look for horns and fangs.

To check beneath the bed.

When you know we must check everywhere

And look for men we trust instead.

Please stop saying they’re monsters.

It’s our husbands, it’s our friends.

We cannot fight what we cannot name.

The misogynists, they’re men.