Pictured: two people demonstrate an early abortion technique on a papaya, by using vacuum aspiration. Doctors say that a papaya is the perfect model of a uterus. The amount of papaya guts (shown in the second photo) constitute as much matter as 6 weeks’ worth of pregnancy tissue.

Thanks again to the Reproductive Health Access Project for making this possible.

rgr-pop:

Yeah Suzy!

I should also add, too, that this kind of argument completely erases the fact that prison subjects bodies to rape in hugely escalated ways. IE, people go to jail for, say, drug possession and then are raped or (less rampantly) become rapists. There aren’t really stats on this, but the idea that most prison rape is committed by other prisoners bothers me and is probably not true at all. Prison makes bodies particularly vulnerable to rape by cops, guards, doctors, janitors, fucking everyone. A prison industrial complex, a prison system at all, is always going to be what we call a “rape culture” because it is a culture which removes economic and legal value from bodies, which completely separates bodies from their autonomy, which by definition erases the right/power/capability that any body has to exercise anything that looks like “consent,” and which makes a rape of these bodies unpunishable by any means.

And (if you watch SVU you know this all too well) a support of prisons is a complicity in using rape as punishment for (almost always) lesser wrongs, most of which are not actually bodily infractions but are capitalist ones—drugs, property theft. Rape becomes something that it is okay to do to certain bodies, and rape becomes something it is especially okay to do to bodies that fuck with capitalism. In prisons, rape props up capitalism. (And let’s not forget that this is literal: guess how many things in your home and neighborhood were made by prison labor? Guess how many things on your boobs were made using prison labor?)

If you fuck with capitalism you go to jail. If you go to jail you get raped. If you get raped you don’t go to jail. If you rape a prisoner you get a high five from Eliott Stabler.

I don’t want to overlook the important fact, though: dude socialists will always always use the PIC as a way to derail and redirect any conversation about accountability for rapists. Even though, as you said, most rapists are not in prison, nor will they ever be in prison.

a: I want my rapist to go to jail
dude socialist: you are propping up capitalism, and also I am probably going to rape you because that’s what dudes like me do

*anarchists too, and really any dude, or maybe anybody, but I’ve met mostly the socialist ones

Smashing The Prison Industrial Complex In Three Easy Steps, According To White Dudes In Their Twenties:

1. FREE ALL RAPISTS! ANY WOMAN OR QUEER PERSON WHO WANTS TO INVOLVE THE STATE IN THEIR TRAUMA IS AN ENEMY OF THE CAUSE AND SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM ALL ORGANIZING SPACES. ALSO PROBABLY RAPED.
2. ANY PERSON WHO DOES NOT PROTEST MY WEED POSSESSION CHARGES* IS AN ENEMY OF LIBERATION
3. IF WE SOLVE THESE PROBLEMS, ALL THE POOR BLACK PEOPLE WILL BE SAVED

*wherein I will never face jail time if I am white but am really mad about having to do community service

This is like my favorite example of a tag team in the history of feminist tumblr. I love this response and I love how smart you are.

mcgoats:

lavender-labia:

thegreenwolf:

Committing a crime does not remove someone’s humanity. I would rather live in a society where rapists and murderers are still treated as human beings, even in a prison, because preserving their right to be human is as important as protecting my right to be…

Wow ok I’m not gonna treat or think of rapists with compassion literally ever thx xoxo

sorry not sorry

Okay so this thread has really started to irk me.

Everyone crying “BUT WHERE WILL ALL THE RAPISTS GO?!?!?!” at those for prison abolition really miss several points here. And one of them is that actually, the vast majority of rapists actually DO NOT end up in prison.

If only 56% or estimated rapes are reported and only 3% of those charged with rape ever see a jail cell, who’s to say that most prisoners are rapists? In fact it seems a minority of prisoners actually are violent offenders. Meanwhile, a rising number of people in prison are actually “drug offenders” (AKA young people of color who sell or use drugs) who’ve been racially profiled. According to wikipedia:

As of 2006, 49.3% of state prisoners, or 656,000 individuals, were incarcerated for non-violent crimes. As of 2008, 90.7% of federal prisoners, or 165,457 individuals, were incarcerated for non-violent offenses.^[22] Drug offenses account for two-thirds of the rise in the federal inmate population since 1985; approximately half a million people are in prison for a drug offense today compared to 40,000 in 1981—an increase of 1,100 percent.^[23]

The reason we demonstrated in front of a women’s prison on Mother’s Day is because incarcerated women, especially women of color, are disproportionately survivors of violence and trauma. Many of them are incarcerated as a result of their abuse; many fight back, many get duped by their abusers, and many consequently have to leave their families behind. Also, with regards to transwomen, many are profiled by police under the suspicion of being sex workers, and have had to fight off hate crimes.  Eve Ensler, who I usually feel iffy about, has made an excellent documentary and play called Any One of Us, and Victoria Law has written a book called Resistance Behind Bars, which articulates women’s struggles in prisons and outside of them. Angela Davis has also written extensively on the subject as a black feminist and former political prisoner. These works show that these prisoners don’t need to be confined; they need serious help.

If the current criminal justice system was any good, the assholes on Wall Street would be done for, and so would roughly 94% of rapists. If it was any good, my own father wouldn’t have been thrown in prison under the racist pretense that he was undocumented, when he actually showed up to court to pay a debt. But instead, prisons uphold white supremacy and slavery, and continue cycles of abuse for marginalized people. So you all need to do yourselves a favor and read up before you start attacking prison abolitionists, instead of individualizing a structural problem by saying things like “But I need prisons!” When you obviously have no idea what happens in them or how most people get there. No sympathy for rapists, but no excuses for a fucked up prison system. 

I am a radical feminist. 

However, what I won’t be is a transphobic douchenozzle.

joshishollywood:

Thanks to Mens Rights Activists we now have safe men’s spaces, a more acceptable, inoffensive and less nebulous term used to describe what was previously referred to as “public”

OH MAN THAT’S SO GOOD

cocothinkshefancy:

Fair Pay For All Work: Why Unpaid Internships are a Feminist Concern

It’s that time of year—across campus, students are checking email and voicemail messages in anticipation of what seems like the golden ticket to success: a chance to commit three months of summer to a low- or unpaid desk job. As we send out cover letters and set up interviews, there’s a low rumble of anxiety: “Hire me! Even for free!”

As many as three-quarters of college students undertake internships before they graduate. As Ross Perlin documents in Intern Nation(recently released in paperback), many of these internships are unpaid, and many are illegal. Interns have no access to benefits and protections. In many cases, they don’t even gain any skills, not to mention any advancement in their career paths.

Unpaid internships are a feminist problem as well as a labor one. Women make up the bulk of unpaid interns: According to one study, as many as 77 percent of unpaid interns nationwide may be female (with some survey bias). The industries women often go into, such as media, fashion, or the arts, tend to rely on freelancers, temps, and other forms of “precarious” and poorly compensated labor, Perlin told me in a phone interview. With unpaid internships, pay disparities between men and women begin before we even graduate from college. Further, according to Phil Gardner of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute, companies sometimes offer two tiers of internships—paid ones to students in male-dominated fields like engineering and unpaid ones to students working in female-heavy fields like human resources. Unpaid interns, in a legal limbo between paid employees and full-time students, are often not even covered by standard workplace protections. In cases of sexual harassment, workplace regulations may simply not apply. As recently as 2008, an intern’s sexual harassment claim was dismissed because Washington D.C.’s anti-discrimination law did not include unpaid interns in its definition of employee.

The disposable nature of the unpaid intern’s position affects the way we view our own worth. Perlin points out in his book that students do not readily think of themselves as workers, even when they are, in fact, logging in hours of paid or unpaid labor. They are likely to justify any experience as an “educational” one—although that experience may be as menial as entering data into a spreadsheet without compensation.

The students I talked with did find that they had acquired skills by working over the summer. One woman told me that her internship had informed the content of her thesis; another said that it helped eliminate arts management as a possible career path. But they acknowledged at the same time seeing no option but to work unpaid, even as they recognized having been overworked considering their lack of compensation. “The thing about theater is you need an unpaid internship to get into [the profession],” said one student who worked as a marketing intern for a theater company in New York. “The people that I want to work for really can’t afford to compensate their interns like private companies can,” said one student who had spent three consecutive summers working unpaid (with a school stipend) in a variety of policy or law positions.

It is obviously not an intern’s responsibility to ensure that the work conditions he or she enters are fair ones. This onus falls on employers, regulators, and schools, which should more clearly inform students of their rights as interns and take a more discerning eye to the postings they offer every year.

But we owe it to ourselves to learn and recognize our rights in every environment we enter, even “educational” and “beneficial” ones. If your internship immediately benefits your employer and does not train you, it may be illegal. Your employer cannot use you as a substitute for regular employees, nor should he or she use it as a “trial period” for future employment. More information can be found on the U.S. Department of Labor website—but be aware that at least one court has rejected these criteria.

This is especially important considering the emphasis on compliance and flexibility in a job market that has become more and more precarious. Unpaid internships don’t just introduce you to an office environment; they teach you to be thankful for whatever work opportunities you may have, even if these opportunities are unfruitful and unfulfilling, as others have noted. It’s similar to what feminist and lecturer in philosophy Nina Power has termed “the feminization of labor:” In an uncertain office environment, we’re all expected to be demure, enthusiastic and flexible—the characteristics of a good secretary.

Work is not good will in exchange for good conscience. Our time and our energy have value. We deserve something more than to work unpaid for no gain—as students, as workers, and as people.

- Madeleine M. Schwartz 

HAHAHA you were on the same team as my nemeses! They told me about you too, they said you were my replacement after I left debate. Pshhhh, I’m sure you were better, I would just cite bell hooks a lot and cuss people out. (And I think that by the time I starting citing pomo theory and The Coming Insurrection I had really lost it.)

fuckyeahpolicydebate:

so she is reading all her Marriage=Patriarchy and Capitalism Co-opts Love backfiles.

plus maybe alcohol. 

DEBATE HELPS YOU IN THE REAL WORLD, KIDS.

YOU KNOW:

1) Shit sucks and I’m sorry and I’m sure you’re better off without him and

2) I actually wrote a S.C.U.M. file a long time ago for shits and giggles, you know when I stopped caring that everyone in debate was calling me a crazy feminist bitch. But I caved and ran Death Drive and Baudrillard just ‘cause.

Yeah, the fact is that people change throughout our lives. When I was 13 I totally used “queer” as a slur (even though I got called a dyke all the time, it was just something I was trying to suppress). And from what it looks like, Henry Rollins has evolved some; now he makes fun of his own macho demeanor and tries to be more of a feminist. (Now, by all means, nobody who identifies as a feminist is perfect.) He’s still got a way to go and a lot to learn. But I think what I like about him is that he’s rather open to that. He seems to have a lot more humility than most punk legends. (COUGH COUGH DANZIG COUGH COUGH IAN MACKAYE)

PS: I love your tumblr s/n.

toridori69:

teenboystuff:

Girls, girls, get that cash
If it’s 9 to 5 or shakin’ your ass

Missy Elliot, Work It

teenboystuff is back, i’m so happy i could cry

Teenboystuff’s bringin’ it. I quote this song all the time.

funkyfest:

the only work I’m proud of this semester

PRINTED. DONE.

For Ben Katchor’s Visual Narrative 2 class. Pretty sure the only story he likes is the one I hate which is basically about how put-upon I feel for having to be around other humans on crowded trains (not pictured). WHATEVER BRO.

These are so good y’all. I also feature in the second one in which I compliment some dude on his honey buns.

This is truly the funniest thing I’ve read all day. It’s just too real.