Comments on: From Yes Means Yes: The Not-Rape Epidemic

By: George (newbe)

George (newbe) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:13:08 +0000

I have to get “Yes means yes”, for a few reasons, no offense to the girlcott. First, I cry for women (and men) who have been hurt by bullies, of all kinds. Sexual bullying is especially repugnant because the wounds outlive the episode, and often that wounded is the ability to give and recieve loveing feeling. Second, I applaud those women who stand for themselves and their vision of nurturance and cooperation among their fellow human beings. And last but not least, I cheer with those women who have been able and available to experience the enormous depths of pleasure available to a female human being, no concern as to the orientation that allows for such honest and intimate contact.

- a guy

By: SarahS

SarahS — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 06:14:56 +0000

If you want to read “Yes Means Yes” but don’t want to buy it (for financial or girlcot reasons), PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE consider going to your local public library and getting a copy. I’m a librarian and I’ve had to twist tech services arm to buy ANY feminist books because they keep insisting that no one but me would ead them in our fairly conservative suburb (despite the case I made that we should have POC feminist books since 30% of our district is black or Hispanic, I was told that was too “obscure” for us to carry a few books on the subject).

Every single circulation of every single item is recorded. Compulsively. Libraries live and die by our stats. Purchasing decisions are made by our stats. If your library doesn’t have “Yes Means Yes” ask someone at the reference desk if they can either 1) purchase a copy for the collection and put it on hold for you or 2) attempt to locate a library via WorldCat that will send it to you on interlibrary loan. Any competent librarian should be able to do this for you. You save money, support your community, and support feminist intellectualism and girlcotting.

By: Holly

Holly — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:00:37 +0000

By the way, it bears pointing out that:

“The predator/prey mindset means, according to Serano, that a sexually aggressive women will be labelled “slutty” rather than aggressive.”

The quote that our troll is attacking? It’s by Julia Serano. She has a PhD in biochem and molecular biophysics, and currently works at Berkeley doing research in the field of evolutionary and developmental biology. I think she knows what she’s talking about far better than guy-who-can’t-capitalize-on-the-Internet. The idea that you could debate her without reading her work, based on a one sentence paraphrase, is totally laughable.

By: FeministReview

FeministReview — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 08:19:50 +0000

Sorry for the semi-cross post, but these posts about YMY and all of the amazing stories that have followed reminded me of Jennifer Baumgardner's current I Was Raped campaign, for which she has designed a t-shirt and is fundraising in order to make a film -- along the lines of the I Had an Abortion campaign. Perhaps it's something some of you will want to check out.

By: CassandraSays

CassandraSays — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 03:13:53 +0000

Latoya’s essay really is brilliant. I’m forwarding it to every young woman I know.

About the Girlcott, I’m recommending the book to people anyway, mostly for the reasons Latoya stated above – there really isn’t anything else like it avaliable, and it’s too important NOT to at least try to get people to read. I think rather than a total boycott it might be smarter to reward Seal when they publish GOOD books like this one and boycott the books that are problematic. Still a boycott, but a more targeted one.

Also, what does the troll have against capitalisation? Is this something that was an evolutionary disadvantage for our monkey ancestors?

By: Charity

Charity — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:30:29 +0000

Ali, I said the same thing! The essay is wonderful. Thanks for posting the link here.

By: Eurosabra

Eurosabra — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:19:13 +0000

As a transperson, Serano has an incredibly interesting take on how aggression plays out in normative heterosexuality as a performance of straight masculinity. It was really quite mind-blowing to read a deeper analysis of “Nice Guys finish Last” from a trans perspective.

By: Titanis walleri

Titanis walleri — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 22:43:28 +0000

“a study once done at a college was this. an attractive young female and male both were sent out to proposition the opposite sex for well…sex. you can guess the results. about 4 out of 5 men agreed to the date, none of the women accepted.”
CITATION NEEDED

By: Ali

Ali — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:15:29 +0000

Latoya’s essay is absolutely amazing but there was a trend in the comments that started to get to me a little bit. Namely, don’t just show this essay (or book) to your daughters/girlfriends/nieces/etc. Show this to the men in your life too. They need to see what we go through and how insidous it all is.

Now I’m off to drop this same comment at Racialicious for anyone still making it through all the equally amazing comments over there.

By: Jill

Jill — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:02:51 +0000

No worries, littleapples or Hugo. I know none of us can resist a good troll. I just got bored.