Announcement:
Saturday – March 10th – 12:00 noon
For International Women’s Day: Protest & March against the War on Women!
We’re going to sites of women’s oppression to say:
— Pornography & Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women!
— Abortion on Demand & Without Apology!
— Fight for the Emancipation of Women All Over the World!
** Announce this to your group & come out on March 10th.
** Find us on facebook
** Donate to help make this happen!
Here’s where we’re going and why:
STARTING at St. Patrick’s Cathedral – Fifth Avenue btw 50th-51st Sts:
►The Catholic Church’s approach to women, gender, science and sexuality – like that of many religions – is a Dark Ages disaster! The Pope has condemned condoms (causing millions of HIV/AIDs deaths). The Church condemns homosexuality and insists that “divorce is a sin” (contributing to women staying in abusive marriages). Recently, Catholic Bishops urged “non-compliance” with new regulations requiring health insurance to cover birth control!
MARCH to TIMES SQUARE:
►Protest the objectification of women! Women’s near-naked and rail-thin bodies are displayed, often in subservient poses, and used to sell everything from clothes to cars to “American culture” to the entire world.
►Protest the U.S. Military Recruiting Center! The U.S. Military concentrates violence against women! This includes its quasi-official reliance on brothels as a “perk” to male soldiers; the role of military forces in trafficking women and girls; and the epidemic of rape, harassment and violence against female soldiers.
MARCH to and PROTEST STRIP CLUBS in the area!
►U.S. men spend an estimated $15 billion annually on strip clubs, as compared to $4 billion on baseball. Strip clubs have always objectified and degraded women. But with women entering – and fighting for increasing respect in – the public sphere, strip clubs have become the new “all male preserve” and an enclave for male chauvinism and entitlement towards women’s bodies. Further, strip clubs prey upon the desperation, abuse and addiction of many women, including women who’ve been kidnapped and trafficked.
ALONG THE WAY: Protest “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” & Celebrate Abortion Provider Appreciation Day:
►Crisis Pregnancy Centers are fake “clinics” that knowingly prey on women for whom being pregnant is a crisis. However, they are driven by an anti-abortion agenda. They often have no clinical staff, spread lies, guilt-trip women, and enormously delay and complicate women’s ability to access abortion.
►In contrast, we’ll celebrate abortion providers because March 10th is Abortion Provider Appreciation Day!
Read the call to action that started this whole campaign.
Call to END PORNOGRAPHY AND PATRIARCHY:
THE ENSLAVEMENT AND DEGRADATION OF WOMEN!
We are told that “equality for women has been won” and that “there are no limits to what girls can achieve.” BULLSHIT!
Every 15 seconds a woman is beaten. Every day three to four women are killed by their partners. One out of four female college students will be raped or sexually assaulted while in college.
In recent years, pornography has become increasingly violent, cruel, degrading towards women; women are referred to as “cumdumpsters” and “fuckbuckets”; the “money shot” (ejaculation in a woman’s face) is standard; humiliating cruelty-like violent “ass-to-mouth” penetration-is normalized, and racist bigotry is sexualized. Meanwhile, the broader culture has been pornified: pole dancing is taught at gyms, “sexting” is a national phenomenon among teens, and the strip club is the accepted backdrop to “male bonding.” All this is tied in with, and reinforces, the trafficking of millions of women and girls as literal chattel in the international sex industry.
This is NOT society becoming more comfortable with sex. This is society becoming saturated with the sexualized degradation of women. If you can’t imagine sex without porn, you’re fucked.
At the same time, a Christian fundamentalist-driven assault is imperiling abortion, birth control, real sex education and women’s lives. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people who do not conform to traditional patriarchal gender and sexual norms are demonized and threatened. Abortion doctors are killed. Women who seek abortions-or even birth control-are stigmatized. 2011 saw the largest spate of legal restrictions on abortion since Roe v. Wade in 1973.
ALL THIS MUST BE STOPPED!
Fetuses are not babies. Women are not incubators. Abortion is not murder.
Women are not objects. Women are not things to be used for the sexual pleasure of men NOR are they breeders of children. WOMEN ARE HUMAN BEINGS CAPABLE OF FULL EQUALITY IN EVERY REALM!
It is long past time that this new generation stand up, reject, and RESIST this culture of rape and pornography; this culture that labels women “selfish” if they choose not to become mothers; this culture that reduces women and girls to sexualized objects while denying their full multi-dimensional humanity (including their right-as one essential part of this-to explore their sexuality without shame or stigma); this culture that demonizes and bullies LGBT people.
Our purpose is NOT to lobby for new legislation to ban pornography (“decency laws” have always served to further repress homosexuality, boundary-challenging art, and scientific sex education). We oppose the criminalization of women in the sex industry. Our mission is to challenge the new generation in particular to reject this culture of rape and pornography, to resist the shaming of women who have sex and/or abortions, to wage fierce cultural and political resistance to wake others up, and to bring forward a liberating culture that celebrates the full equality and liberation of women.
contact: stoppatriarchy@gmail.com
