People have this misconception that Jane Austen wrote romances. Especially Pride and Prejudice - which was written at a time when novels were just a step removed from the devils work and young ladies were encouraged to read sermons rather than the Gothic horrors, such as The Mysteries of Udolpho, which Austen references in Northhanger Abbey, that had been general fair available for young women to read instead.

I think people underestimate Pride and Prejudice as a guide to seeking employment and economics for a particular class of women society. The choice was, a) be rich and independently wealthy, such as Emma, Lady Russell, Lady Catherine de Bourgh and her daughter, b) be a governess, and c) marriage.

And thus it's considered to be a romance.

Austen states pretty clearly that women have to enter marriage with their eyes wide open (Charlotte Lucas and that love is for men). While keeping your eyes open when you have no idea what a man is like in private because you are only allowed to meet him in public (to ensure your virginity), you have little experience of the world (because you are very young) and figuring out how much money he has, has got to sound mercenary but the reality is many women died in child birth at the time. So if marrying might mean your death in delivering an heir, you might as well make it as comfortable as possible by being rich.

And this seems to have been so easily forgotten - it wasn't until very recently that women stopped dying in child birth but then again the numbers are increasing again, at least in the US.

Austen wrote about the class system and how easily the rich manipulate those with less money for their own amusement. Think of Emma and how easily she manipulates Harriet Smith and in the end (the book not the movies) Emma will no longer associate with Harriet who goes on to marry the farmer. In movies they always reunite Emma and Harriet, and imply they remain life long friends.

Probably the weirdest thing people have told me is that Bridget Jones is a modern Pride and Prejudice - I always cringe when hearing this because the Bridget Jones is nothing like Elizabeth Bennett. But the only reason why people say this is that in the 1995 BBC version was made with the same actor playing Darcy as they used in Bridget Jones. While Darcy is important to the story, Austen pretty much uses him as a potentially interchangeable protagonist - we never really get inside Darcy's mind until he writes his letter to Lizzy. Even the author of Bridget Jones said she has no pretensions of crafting a modern Elizabeth Bennett.

Pride and Prejudice is about Elizabeth and her mental life. I am pretty much convinced Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice in response to Mary Wollstonecraft's Maria, where Wollstonecraft complains about the portrayal of women in literature.

I realized I didn't provide references for the statistics I quoted last time but for the record I have gathered these statistics several times on this blog so dig a little an you'll find the figures and links to the sources. I usually gather these figures from the FBI where they detail online many crime statistics, plus I use incarceration figures as well. These numbers have changed over the years slightly and new figures are posted every year.

But I was thinking about Gary Southern again, yes I know, I love to say who? after mentioning this guys name but in my opinion, any man who gets 1 month jail time for poisoning a state's drinking water deserves infamy, and I mean the Casey Anthony or Monica Lewinsky levels of infamy, and neither of these women did anything as bad as what Gary Southern did. And I'd like to add Snyder to my list of infamous men, that'd be Rick (or dick as I'd like to refer to him) the governor who poisoned all those kids in Flint Michigan.

Why isn't he infamous, when what he did was much much worse than Lewinsky?

I blame the media. they never shut up about the women but slide on by when it comes to the shit these men do. This is why we get shitty men like Kavanaugh on the SCOTUS, and the POS in the white house, the guy who gloats about grabbing "pussy".

These men are shameful, indeed, I'm deeply embarrassed that these men are supposed to represent me in anyway. but they don't represent me. We've forgotten what politics is for. It is nothing but entertainment for the small minded who live in a world of 'people' magazine and stupid television.

Turn off your TV, stop reading the news - indeed - putting news behind a paywall is probably the best thing that's happened to the news; the mainstream media love Trump because he sells them advertising.

But the way, these guys behave like they think they're entitled to do the things they do and when they get caught, throw a tantrum and then go about their business, because we don't put them on a list of infamous shame as women are and the media are to blame for this.

There is no end to the evil men do and then blame others for.

Yes, I know, not all men.

However, think about 'she was asking for it' and you know exactly what i mean - he's not to blame - she was 'asking' to be raped... then there are the associated questions: what was she wearing, how drunk was she... Society has been trained to believe it really isn't the man's fault she was raped.

Indeed women take the responsibility for everything, because most women are conditioned to apologize constantly even for things they did not do.

But the reality is it was definitely the man's fault.

Why do we constantly let men off the hook?

Another example is: men are constantly tearing up the environment for the sake of profit, they are digging up the world, we buy their stuff, throw it away and then other men bury it. Of course these men will blame consumers, they will blame women for wanting to marry rich men, they will blame... someone else.

Politics taking a leaf out of history learned this lesson well - men in the middle ages blamed and burned women at the stake, Hitler and the Nazis blamed the Jews, Slavs, Roma, homosexuals, the old.... these days men blame Hispanics, Muslims, immigrants...

Feminism is ruining ... everything, we're told by men, because we know men aren't to blame for anything - men never started a war - women start all the wars too. and then they will turn around and say things like - men are murdered more often than women - yes men are the primary victim of murder - but they are murdered by other men - a fact they neglect to mention constantly. Men are also the victim of more violence - but not at the hands of women, as they like to point out how violent women are - nevertheless, men are the victim of more violence but that violence is at the hands of other men - and when men are raped, they like to say men are raped by women - and possibly there are women who rape men - but the statistics demonstrate that men rape men more often.

Men have a man problem.

I'd like to tell men, especially rich, white, older men to stop blaming others for the shit they do. And when they are finally caught, these men will turn around and act like they didn't know what they were doing was wrong.

At the risk of sounding sexist, I'd like to tell these men to grow a pair and take responsibility for your actions.

If you ever read any game theory you'll quickly learn why men suicide at such a high rate in the US. Basically it's about branding people as 'winners' and 'losers' and those who share, yep you guessed it, are definitely 'loser'.

So you think of a pie which is meant to be divided somehow - the winner would get all the pie and the loser none. That might be nice for the winner if they can eat a whole pie but then the rest of us miss out and the winner has to spend way longer at the gym. If you like working out then that's awesome for you. Meanwhile, everyone else is hungry and with the zero-sum game mentality, you probably don't care because you just ate the pie. It's not until the 'winner' needs heart surgery from eating too much that they'll wish they had shared the pie with the heart specialist and the other hospital staff because in the meantime they starved to death.

While you may think you're doing best getting all or most of the pie while others get none, nobody else matters in this equation - it's a superficial win, and bad for you, ultimately, because it's the attitude that'll cause you to suicide.

You see they did research to figure out what made rich white men happy - and then they decided to broaden the research to figure out what made poor (white) men happy. And what they found was that all the money or pie in the universe doesn't make you happy. what makes people happy are their relationships to other people (not pie or money).

Feeling useful and needed is one of the best preventatives against suicide - not eating all the pie. Feeling useful and needed isn't only a preventative against suicide, it is also useful in curbing addictions.

Still you don't have to have the intellect of Einstein to figure out when we're all better off, we're all better off.

While this makes perfect sense to me, even if it is as simple as, if my neighbors kids have opportunities and good income they aren't breaking into my house - they don't need state funded rehab or prison time - all things that my tax has to fund - and even if my tax is funding a great education for my neighbors kids, it means later they'll have good jobs either in other people's businesses or their own and they can finance my retirement. If my neighbors kids are in prison or rehab their prospects will be bad and not great for adding to the economy, other than as cash cows for men who own and operate prisons and rehabs.

Plus they have found that when there is greater economic equality in a country, everyone is better off, and greater inequality is bad for everyone.

 I hate this meme - yeah i know it's meant to be funny, and that's how people who use it think it's meant to be see - as merely funny - but it's not.

You see women are policed for being too fat/thin, good mothers, whether they are too slutty, whether she is/was asking for it... now this meme is telling us we have to police women to keep it 'real' too.  "real" as opposed to 'snooty' which i guess we have to figure out whether the woman looks too rich and it's only really men who are allowed to be rich.

Some people have tried to pass it off as 'people' but it explicitly states women and grocery store? Well that is a job women do, buy the groceries. But there are men who do go grocery shopping and one man who I talked to about sharing this said "men do keep it real in the grocery store".. seriously, this guy has polled every man who goes shopping?

Aren't we over policing women yet?

My other real problem is - whether we deem a woman is too snooty at a store is trivial to the real shit that is going on in the world - men still aren't being policed for violent behavior, and as soon as I said that - you thought - not all men are violent.

The other night I was watching the Prime documentary on Lorena Bobbitt. I wasn't in the US at the time this happened, I only heard about it through the filter of press in which ever country I was in at the time and it was all treated as a horrible joke - where women in the US were out of control running around willy-nilly chopping men's penises off like it was the new fashion or something - and the description of the search for the missing member was astonishing - the trouble they went to! Once women's clits are chopped off in countries they still do that in, is there a search? - I don't think so and no one would consider reattaching a clit anyway.

I digress.

The brutality with which Lorena had been treated by her husband was completely ignored by the press despite the televised case. The story is still thought of as "she chopped his penis off because he was supposedly cheating". From what I can gather from the documentary Lorena would have been happy if he'd been cheating.

The documentary did touch briefly on John's upbringing - and it was NOT pretty. I think John lost both parents at an early age was no doubt the product of pedophilia, violence and who knows how much verbal and emotional abuse.

Nevertheless, having violence inflicted upon you, physical, emotional, sexual, is no excuse to do it to other people. It possibly is the only option for people who have known no other life, perhaps, and don't know it is possible to deal with situations in other ways, but you do NOT have to perpetuate violence in any of it's forms. It is a choice.

Female journalists wanted to write articles about domestic violence but their male editors shut them down (rich white men own and operate pretty much everything), according to the documentary, saying, "nobody wants to hear about that stuff". But the mainstream media is how we learn so much about our society.

Boys and men are the primary recipient of violence, and although some women may be violent, most of the violence males experience is at the hands of other men. Males are nearly four times more likely to be murdered than females, males are nearly 10x more likely to murder than females. It should be noted about half of all murders are never solved. But when it comes to domestic violence, men are about 5x more likely to kill their wives than a woman is likely to kill her husband.

I did see a static once showing that males are 3x more likely than a female to be murdered by male, but it was a while back and I can't find the reference now. Also most of the violence, sexual and physical males experience is at the hands of other males.

We need to speak about this, rather than worry whether a woman is too snooty, ffs. We worry about women so much because, i think more than anything, we're afraid of men, men are afraid of men.

This is keeping it really real: men have a man problem.

Interestingly John Bobbitt got off for raping his wife, yet Lorena was sentenced - even though she went to a psychiatric facility, which I think she thought was useful for her. I think this shows a bias in the justice system, and that it's about maintaining the social order, so the justice system is biased towards white men. And if you want to know how biased society and our justice system is, have a look at Gary Southern. I bet you are asking yourself who is Gary Southern. In my opinion this guy has done much worse than any woman has ever done, yet he is not a household name.

The problem is that men have created a hierarchy men which they live under and force the rest of us to live in as well, because might makes right and that's how you ascend the hierarchy.

It's something most feminists never discuss unless we are talking about the forcible castration (sterilization) of females in the prison system and else where.  I guess guys get castrated, women get sterilized.

And it is as sexist as it is racist.

but feminists are constantly being accused of wanting men's balls as we see in this image although i found the image was used in reference to men who sexually assault children. But that is not what the image says, it implies we women enjoy taking men's balls.

But the reality seems to be otherwise. Men want to rid themselves of their balls because they are tired of being men. There was a period in Chinese history where the govt had to ban self castration because men where convinced that removing their balls would mean life would be better for them. I hate using wikipedia as a source because it's likely to change because some man may feel feminized by it.

The same idea is in Christianity as well - that to enter the kingdom of heaven, it's important to make yourself a eunuch. Now I know christians have tried to make this mean something else - IE they've tried to make this about marriage instead or something, but Jesus seems quite adamant about chopping things off that make you sin, and I think Jesus is trying to make this very clear here especially to men. Because men do use their gender as a weapon against women and children.

Indeed many civilizations have a long history of castrating men especially when it comes to guarding harems. And apparently making yourself a eunuch comes with all kinds of health benefits, such as preventing certain kinds of cancers, but what surprised me is that there are so many men who either fantasize about it or have actually harmed themselves giving themselves orchiectomies.

What also astonished me is that there is even literary porn written by men about the joys of having their balls removed. Amazon will even supply you with reading material on 'How and why i got castrated'.

While some may put this down to wanting wanting to transgender, clearly some men identify as female and want to transition their gender, but it doesn't account for the men just want to be free of their balls because "they showed a greater desire to reduce libido, change their genital appearance, transition out of male, and prevent sexually offensive behavior."

So next time you think a feminist is after a male's balls, we aren't. Perhaps it's you projecting your fantasy upon us.

Men have been falling over themselves since #MeToo to denounce the movement - from Terry Gilliam, Tony Robbins and all the way to Mike Pence who only talks to his wife, when it comes to women - I hope he hasn't got any daughters.

It's been pointed out before that this is Pence being sexist, of course. It's a way of keeping women in their place, it smells of an excuse to be rude to women who might talk to him, it's the same as those Islamic clerics who turn their backs to female teachers because they refuse to believe a woman can teach them anything, including English. (I used to be friends with a woman who taught English to middle eastern immigrants and she told me how some of these men would sit with their backs on her in class. Not all, but some did. I have no problem with Islam, it's the fundamentalists of all religions that are the real problem, whether it is Islamic, Judaism or Hare Krishna-ism...or Christian in the case of Pence.)

It is interesting to note that most of the men (that I am aware of) that came out against the #MeToo movement have issued apologies to the movement. It's curious how the initial denouncement made headlines but all the apologies were ignored.

Now Bloomberg has published an article stressing women have to be ignored and avoided when working on Wall St, which i saw last night and again today - which has been heralded as the greatest insight since sliced bread (did i just mix my metaphors? - oh well). I'm not the first to respond to this article, Sallie Krawcheck already has.

It's simple, just treat us like one of the guys but don't talk about sex in front of us. Would you grab a guys butt? brush your hand against his fly? Stop touching us.

How do the guys who were victims of other men's sexual advances feel about men denouncing the #MeToo movement?

Women are typically not vindictive - no more so than men are - or perhaps men are judging women by their standards, perhaps men are more vindictive than I ever realized - I don't know, I haven't done scientific studies into it - but i would love to.

Or perhaps it's time we do like Krawcheck does, just go off and do our own thing. I would trust Krawcheck with my money more than I would other investment firms on Wall St, and perhaps that's what these guys at Bloomberg and elsewhere are really worried about, we'll prove to be better at what we do than they are and we might even start treating them as badly as they've treated us over the years.

But one thing is certain, things won't change if we stop. We have to keep on going. We are no longer needed in the kitchen or cleaning house - we don't need to be devoted to reproducing - there are plenty of children in the world already, we have to do something, so we might as well fix the world, because men have made a mess of it.

Generally a reasonable show on HBO before the 2018 elections, but I'm not sure where it was, Dallas?, it wasn't their first show which HBO allow people to watch free, where a black woman came on and discussed the problem with white women voting for Trump.
But she's not the only one - typically I've seen a lot of left white male democrats come along and blame white women for voting for Trump. according to exit polls, white women voted for trump at a little over 50%, but not as bad as the 62% of white men who voted for Trump. exit polls are exit polls - who knows if they are lying or not.
what pisses me off about this meme and others like it, they always display women like women are the reason why trump was elected; that women are the stupid ones, that somehow the damage that trump is doing is harmless and that the women are able to do all this double think and illogic - because this is how stupid women are.
after all it is women who have a lot to lose if trump and his cronies are elected.

however if you look at the exit polls for 2018, women voted hard as they could.

below is the face of trump voters, which you will never see in a meme because this is terrifying, and as per normal white men are doing nothing about it but blame women - then expecting women to fix it, yet white men are doing nothing to fix the problem they created in the first place.

main-stream-media has carved us up into groups for the advertising industry - all owned and operated primarily by white men. they carved us up to elect a republican - in this case trump - white men paid to have us carved up.

men follow-the-leader, whoever that leader may be. yes it is bound to be a generalization, no doubt some men can actually think for themselves.

yes there are some women who will vote for trump - they are a part of our society - some women have been conditioned to believe all women are inferior to men, that perhaps some women are equal to men, that perhaps they are equal to men but no other woman is - i don't know what they think. as a feminist - i don't want all women walking in lock step with each other. i want women to be all different and unique.

So I am told Kavanaugh is a 'good' man by more than Trump, I've been told on Twitter, by google, facebook - it's everywhere, and remarkably even these republican woman even tell me - what boy hasn't done stuff like that in school - yikes - girls expect to be raped by all the 'good' men out there.

This man told me men shouldn't marry women or raise daughters who do political hit jobs. Although I am certain that hit jobs against Democrats would be okay.

Yet when I ask how would they feel if Kavanaugh got raped or raped a boy instead, there is silence. But one man who'd told me Kavanaugh is 'good' told me he suspected he'd been raped.

Yes I have sympathy for the guy - but I did say: well no doubt they were 'good' men who raped you, just like Kavanaugh is a 'good' man....

This guy accused me of not having any empathy that all I was trying to do was gain the political win. I told him where is your empathy for raped women?

Time and time again we should have sympathy for male rape victims but none for female rape victims? Why is that? I think it is because men want to believe women want it, or are asking for it... because I think men have the rape fantasy - they want women to rape them, they want to think they are that desirable.

Women don't go through the ordeal of accusing men of raping them unless it is true. There is this myth that women make up rape accusations because they are vindictive, that the sex was consensual but then he spurned her or some bullshit. It is estimated that false rape claims are at about 2%.

Trying to find the occurrence of other false accusations is difficult - anyone would think women have nothing better to do than accuse men of raping them, because even when googling false accusations of theft, identify theft, violence, drug use still give listings for false accusations of rape.

But it is one of those times when men get the benefit of privacy - we still give men the benefit of the doubt because we don't see them doing bad things in public.

We have a big problem with privacy. First of all, it's pretty much guaranteed we have pretty much none. Secondly there are those people who think we don't need any. Which I know most people will turn into 'well share your bank keycode with me and your other passwords...'. Yes we do want some privacy. Do people really want to hear me singing in the shower - listening will be your own punishment.

But we have a bigger problem with privacy - in that when people abuse (either sexually, emotionally or physically) their family they usually do this in the privacy of their own home. But privacy extends way beyond the home - it can be done in all manner of ways on the internet.

Well I won't go into corporations invading our privacy in our homes via computers and the IoT.

My issue is that all the invasion of our privacy via corporations doesn't protect us from those who'd harm us in our homes.

If you are being abused by a parent it's not like google or the NSA is going to come rescue you and stop the abuse.

Some while back on Facebook a guy I'd never met sent me a photo of his erection - in private. He sent it via direct message - so it was all done in private - you know - so everyone will continue to think this guy is a good guy because he'd never do such a thing - in private - because we can't see it - it probably never happened - right?

This is where privacy becomes part of rape culture - you see if the guy did come around to my house and physically raped me - it'd then become a matter of he said/she said. Because we've been acculturated to believe that rape is her fault - what was she wearing - in this case - what was my avatar on Facebook at the time - and no doubt Facebook knows what it was just in case such an event does occur and press charges. So then they both (the guy doing the raping and facebook) can prove I was being a saucy minx who had it coming.

It probably would never come out in court that I do not know this guy from a grain of salt.

Anyway, Facebook says it's not against community standards to send unsolicited photos of erect penises via direct message. And if something did happen no doubt it'd be back to he-said/she-said. When I reported the photo and person I got the above response from Facebook.

In other words, Facebook enables rape culture with their policy.

A friend with whom I discussed this said that this guy was 'figuratively' raping.