misogyny

Weed culture is fascinated with feminine eroticism. Sex sells and often goes hand in hand with drugs. This has harmed many women who work in the marijuana industry, where being sexually exploited is part of the job.

The Petito case challenges us to consider how we language romantic harm. Domestic violence seldom stays at home.

I was lost. Although I had never imagined myself as a mother at the time, I knew it couldn't happen the way it was going to. I was despondent and caught in a physically, emotionally and sexually abusive relationship. I didn't need a child. I needed help. During this terrible time, I experienced a clear realization that if I went forth with this pregnancy, my baby would suffer.

A story of workplace abuse: “Saftey words are for Pussies!” read the misspelled Roy-Lichtenstein-does-BDSM faux pop art painting displayed in the office of the Anonymous Sex Toy Company. "Safe, Sane, and Consensual" was the company motto. None of the men running the company understood those slogans were incompatible.

When battered women "move on," sometimes, we "start over" in a new home that's, in many ways, a reconstitution of our old home. We might not be sharing walls or a roof with the piece of shit who fucked us up but the weapons he used remain. Weapons like a bed. They don't look like weapons. They look like ordinary things. That's what's so frightening about them.

No daughter should live in terror of her dad and prolonged fear of a caregiver, especially a masculine one, indicates that someone may be experiencing coercive control, an ongoing form of gendered oppression characterized by a combination of conditions which are documented by Framing Britney Spears.

Using the word "brave" exalts certain traumatized people as heroic and casts others as failures. All victims of assault deserve to have their experiences dignified with validation, not just those who earn it through "bravery."

In the same way that I believe the protests must riot and must loot and must burn shit down, I believe we have a right to defend ourselves. Not just to defend ourselves, I believe we have a right to riot and loot and burn shit down when it comes to these fucking fascist predatory fucks who are in home and on the street.