feminist blogs in english

photo of Dr. Mehmet Oz is from here

photo of Dr. Phil McGraw is from here

These are two white het male doctors who owe their fame and great financial success to Oprah Winfrey: Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz. (We get to Dr. Laura shortly.)

The first man, who has a PhD in Clinical Psychology, supported her during a trial the commercial/atrocity-protecting meat industry put her through for simply stating her own point of view on the subject of burgers. The second is am M.D. who is a heart surgeon and is a proponent of complimentary medicine, to promote several less invasive methods of treating heart disease. He's also more infamously known for showing Oprah's audiences deceased humans' diseased organs and talking about healthy pooping. He's got some very good things to say--generally I like him and his style, and he's got a good bed-side manner, unless you're a battered woman in a hospital bed, that is. I also sometimes like Dr. Phil, when he isn't using his television series to exploit conditions and people and instead sincerely tries to alleviate human suffering, usually in the context of personal relationships. While I've seen Dr. Phil hold men accountable for the violence they do to women, I've never seen Dr. Oz do this.

I realise he didn't study sociology, social psychology, or the sexual politics of psychopathology, but Dr. Oz couldn't be more clueless about the reality and dynamics of men's war against women. He actually discusses inner brain structure to explain why it may be that some women kill their terrorist husbands or battering boyfriends. He doesn't seem to get that women who are terrorised and sadistically abused do not usually kill anyone, while the terrorists often kill a whole lot of people: most commonly the women in their lives, the women who leave them, and their children, in disgustingly horrid ways. But Dr. Oz's brain structure discussion isn't about THE TERRORISTS. He's concerned about the brain structures of the TERRORISED WOMEN who [usually don't] kill. What are the sexual politics of THAT?

In a case linked to below, he tries to explain to the audience why a woman guest may have killed the male terrorist in her life. He is wrong at every turn, and fortunately he has another "expert" guest on to set the audience clear on what is really going on. Unfortunately, it is yet another white man. (To be clear: Dr. Oz's family's background is Eastern European and Turkish. Dr. Phil is all white.) How it is that white and light-skinned het men have become the people women should turn to for expert advice on anything and everything, is a trick of the trades called WHM supremacist media and education. What undermines feminist knowledge and activists, scholars and doctors, is the owners and producers of mass media talk shows refusing to make women of any color the experts in matters that impact women--and men.

Well, there IS Dr. Laura, who has a PhD in physiology--which is not at all why she's on the air. At least Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil are discussing matters that usually fall within their own educational areas of study. She gives anti-woman, overtly racist, anti-gay relationship advice. She's way more WHM supremacist than Dr. Phil or Dr. Oz in her public advice. She should be removed from the airwaves. Immediately, as she should have been years ago for calling "homosexuals" deviant.

photo of Dr. Laura Schlessinger is from here

She is in the news this week for her arrogantly privileged racist-misogynist assault against a Black woman caller who wanted wise counsel on how to deal with a white husband who, along with his friends, makes racist remarks in front of her. He obviously enjoys trying to humiliate her. Would Dr. Laura pick up on that? Well...

Dr. Laura used the question--while berating and abusing the questioner--as an opportunity to pretend that THE ISSUE is African Americans who are the problem population who uses the n-word and COMPLAIN when whites do the same. Dr. Laura managed to work the word into her radio show eleven times in way fewer minutes than that. The caller, understandably, was totally taken aback and very respectfully attempted to call Dr. Laura's attention to the problem of turning this problem back on a Black woman, which only led Dr. Laura to intensify her own vitriolic volume, utterly silencing the woman seeking wise counsel. Dr. Laura understood the caller's predicament about as well as Dr. Oz understands why [very few] women kill terroristic men. NOT. AT. ALL.

While I think Dr. Phil makes mistakes many times with regard to appropriate forms of advocacy for women-in-patriarchy, too often presuming a kind of level playing field that patriarchal societies will never let exist, I'll say this: he's way ahead of where Dr. Oz and Dr. Laura will probably ever be on the matter of understanding that far too many men terrorise and grotesquely abuse women--and that men's use of physical violence is NEVER the women's fault! Proof of this difference between the two male doctors is in very intense (and potentially very triggering) programs each recently did about the subject of domestic violence leading to murder.

Dr. Oz's show wasn't about patriarchal abuse. It was about how the brain sometimes doesn't work right so some people cannot moderate their violent impulses. And he means women's violent impusles, not men's!

Dr. Phil's program was a VERY good program, if also deeply disturbing and triggering, about the FAILURE of FAMILY COURTS across the U.S. when it comes to adequately protecting children and women from adult male terrorists. His show centered around one case, in which a woman's baby was murdered by her ex- and the baby's father, after she repeatedly went to the court for orders of protection for herself and the baby--each time she was told by the white het male misogynistic judge that she was lying and had no evidence, even when she brought evidence. But there was another interview he did with a teenaged young woman who is a survivor of incest and witnessed a court give custody of her little sister to the incest perpetrator, after she testified about his abuse of her. Yes. It happened. The audience was also filled with women who had similar stories to tell, which appeared to have a VERY supportive effect on anyone who spoke out on this horrendous issue of VIRULENT PATRIARCHAL PREDATION PROTECTIONISM in family courts across the country.

What gets revealed is that the terrorists and their attorneys, along with generally misogynistic society, have effectively convinced the courts to not believe mothers if they raise "domestic violence" as a factor in why those mothers should get custody of their children, not the fathers. Even the women's attorneys are counseling women to not bring up the fact that the ex-husband is a batterer or incest perpetrator because too many judges hear that as a big ol' lie--an allegedly sure sign that the woman is trying to manipulate the court against the interests of the fathers' "right" to have more access to their children. When it comes to court manipulation, however, look no further than the battering, raping, incesting men and their attorneys, who convince the courts that the lack of evidence presented means they aren't sadistic brutes. In this case, the rule "presumed innocent until proven guilty" cannot apply, because no one's attorney will let the proof into the courtroom to begin with.

This is the case across the white het male supremacist globe, from the U.S., to the UK, to Australia. That there are WHM organising to undermine women's credibility in the courtroom even more is despicable and evil. There's nothing loving or just about such efforts by these misogynazis (fascistic, terrorising woman-haters) at all.

To note how this impacts U.S. women, compare these two episodes of programs that, one would hope, are supporting both physical/emotional health and human rights:

Dr. Oz: http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/tuesday-dr-oz

vs.

Dr. Phil: http://www.drphil.com/shows/show/1442/ 

But I cannot write about Dr. Phil without noting this CLEAR FORM OF MISOGYNY he regularly engages in. HE REFUSES TO STOP SAYING THE B WORD WHEN REFERRING TO WOMEN, and as an adjective (b-word with a y at the end). He a conservative guy, socially-politically, in many ways, and doesn't welcome cursing on his show, generally. I'm not sure you can get away with saying ASS on his show without it being bleeped! But he says the b word like it's going out of style, which of course it won't while he and other major media personalities keep legitimising it on TV. Please write to him and ask him why that's the only derogatory curse term he allows on his show.

And visit *here* for more on the Dr. Laura story of the week. TRIGGER WARNING for OVERTLY RACIST LANGUAGE AND GROSS MISTREATMENT OF A BLACK WOMAN BY A WHITE WOMAN.

[image is from here]

File this one under "How WHM Supremacy WORKS to protect and defend rapists." Especially the rich rapists. All that follows is from YouTube and *here*. NOTE: he's not a pedophile; he's a serial raper of girls; there's nothing "child-loving" about it.

Billionaire Pedophile [sic] Goes Free
Conchita Sarnoff Conchita Sarnoff – Wed Jul 21, 12:05 am ET

NEW YORK – Hedge fund mogul Jeffrey Epstein became a free man Wednesday, five years after he was first accused of sexually abusing underage girls. After months of reporting, The Daily Beast’s Conchita Sarnoff reveals exclusive details of the investigation and the legal wrangling that saved him from a long prison term.

She reports:

• Palm Beach’s police chief objected to Epstein’s “special treatment” and gave The Daily Beast an exclusive look at his nine-hour deposition about the investigation.

• Earlier versions of the U.S attorney’s charges, including a sealed 53-page indictment, could have landed Epstein in prison for 20 years.

• Victims alleged that Epstein molested underage girls from South America, Europe, and the former Soviet republics, including three 12-year-old girls brought over from France as a birthday gift.

• The victims also alleged trips out of state and abroad on Epstein’s private jets, which would be evidence of sex trafficking—a much more serious federal crime than the state charges Epstein was convicted of.

• Epstein’s attorneys investigated members of the Palm Beach Police Department, while others ordered private investigators to follow and intimidate the victims’ families; one even posed as a police officer.

• Then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told The Daily Beast that he “would have instructed the Justice Department to pursue justice without making a political mess.”

Film director Roman Polanski is not the only convicted pedophile to walk free this month and return to a life of privilege. On Wednesday, hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein completes his one-year house arrest in Palm Beach, which has been even less arduous than Polanski’s time at a Swiss ski chalet.

During Epstein’s term of “house arrest,” he made several trips each month to his New York home and his private Caribbean island. In the earlier stage of his sentence for soliciting prostitution with a minor—13 months in the Palm Beach Stockade—he was allowed out to his office each day. Meanwhile, Epstein has settled more than a dozen lawsuits brought by the underage girls who were recruited to perform “massages” at his Palm Beach mansion. Seven victims reached a last-minute deal last week, days before a scheduled trial; each received well over $1 million—an amount that will hardly dent Epstein’s $2 billion net worth.

With that, the known victims of Epstein’s sexual compulsion have been officially silenced, and the case against him is closed unless new ones come forward. According to banking sources, he has been moving assets out of the U.S. and may well follow Polanski into a luxurious exile.

But the question remains: Did Epstein’s wealth and social connections—former President Bill Clinton; Prince Andrew; former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak; New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were just a few of the prominent passengers on his private jets—allow him to receive only a slap on the wrist for crimes that carry a mandatory 20-year sentence? Was he able, with his limitless assets and heavy-hitting lawyers—Alan Dershowitz, Gerald Lefcourt, Roy Black, Kenneth Starr, Guy Lewis, and Martin Weinberger among them—to escape equal justice?

Michael Reiter, the former Palm Beach police chief, certainly thinks so. He gave The Daily Beast exclusive access to the transcript of his nine-hour deposition for the victims’ civil suits, in which he explained how the case against Epstein was minimized by the State Attorney’s Office, then bargained down by the U.S. Department of Justice, all in an atmosphere of hardball legal tactics and social pressures so intense that Reiter became estranged from several colleagues. At the time, Reiter, who retired in 2009 and now runs his own security firm, objected both to Epstein’s plea agreement and to the flexible terms of his incarceration in the county jail rather than state prison. Asked during the deposition whether he thought Epstein received special treatment, he answered “yes.”

In March 2005, Reiter’s department, acting on a complaint from the Florida parents of a 14-year-old girl, launched an investigation that would eventually uncover a pattern of predatory behavior stretching back years and spanning several continents, knowingly enabled by Epstein’s associates and employees. Two or three times a day, whenever Epstein was in Palm Beach, a teenage girl would be brought to the mansion on El Brillo Way. (“The younger the better,” he instructed Haley Robson, a local teenager who was paid to bring other girls to the house, and who declared, on a police tape, that she was “like a Heidi Fleiss,” the infamous California madam.) Advised that she would be giving a “massage,” the girl was then pressured to remove her clothes, submit to fondling and a large vibrator, and sometimes lured into more invasive sexual contact. Each girl was paid $200 or more, depending on how far things went, by house manager Alfredo Rodriguez, who was instructed always to have $2,000 cash on hand.

The Palm Beach Police Department identified 17 local girls who had contact with Epstein before the age of consent; the youngest was 14, and many were younger than 16. And that was just at one of Epstein’s many homes around the world—he also owns property in New York, Santa Fe, Paris, London, and the Caribbean. Subsequent investigation by the FBI, reaching as far back as 2001, indentified roughly 40 victims, not counting Nadia Marcinkova, whom Epstein referred to as his “Yugoslavian sex slave” because he had imported her from the Balkans at age 14. Now 24, Marcinkova became a member of the household and is alleged to have participated in the sexual contact with underage girls.

Epstein quickly got wind of the investigation, and progress on the case got messy very quickly. He hired a squad of lawyers and private investigators and dispatched influential friends to pressure the police into backing off. Instead, local detectives pressed on and brought the matter to the attention of the FBI. The detectives asked their federal colleagues whether the fact that some victims appeared to have traveled out of state on Epstein’s planes—plus the use of interstate phone service to arrange assignations—might be violations of the federal 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which carries a minimum sentence of 20 years. (Florida enacted the federal TVPA in 2002.)

So when State Attorney Barry Krischer, who also ran Florida’s Crimes Against Children Unit, proved reluctant to mount a vigorous prosecution of Epstein, saying the local victims were not credible witnesses, Chief Reiter wrote the attorney a letter complaining of the state’s “highly unusual” conduct and asking him to remove himself from the case. He did not, and the evidence his office presented to a state grand jury produced only a single count of soliciting prostitution. (Krischer has since retired and would not comment for this article.) The day after that indictment was returned, Reiter was relieved to have the FBI step in and take over the investigation.

The details that eventually emerged were often shocking and occasionally bizarre. For Epstein’s birthday one year, according to allegations in a civil suit, he was presented with three 12-year-old girls from France, who were molested then flown back to Europe the next day. These same civil complaints allege that young girls from South America, Europe, and the former Soviet republics, few of whom spoke English, were recruited for Esptein’s sexual pleasure. According to a former bookkeeper, a number of the girls worked for MC2, the modeling agency owned by Jean Luc Brunel, a longtime acquaintance and frequent guest of Epstein’s. Brunel received $1 million from the billionaire around the time he started the agency.

The non-prosecution agreement executed between Epstein and the Department of Justice states that Epstein and four members of his staff were investigated for “knowingly, in affecting interstate and foreign commerce, recruiting enticing and obtaining by any means a person, knowing that person has not yet obtained the age of 18 years and would be caused to engage in commercial sex act”—that is, child sex trafficking. Yet the agreement allowed Epstein to plead guilty to only two lower-level state crimes, soliciting prostitution and soliciting a minor child for prostitution.

Although the police investigation was officially closed, Chief Reiter tried to stay abreast of the federal case against Epstein. He was particularly concerned that Epstein be registered as a sex offender, which was part of the final deal, and that a fund be set up to compensate his victims—which was not, although Epstein agreed to bankroll their civil lawsuits. Attorney Dershowitz says Epstein’s agreement to pay attorney fees for the victims and agree to civil damage claims—without admitting guilt—amounted to “extortion under threat of criminal prosecution.”

But exactly which crimes did the Department of Justice threaten to prosecute? The Daily Beast has learned that there were several earlier versions of the U.S Attorney’s charges, including a 53-page indictment that, had he been convicted, could have landed Epstein in prison for 20 years. Brad Edwards, attorney for seven of the victims, confirms the existence of an earlier draft of the non-prosecution agreement, officially under seal, in which it appears that Epstein “committed, at some point, to a 10-year federal sentence.” But in the end Epstein’s legal team refused that deal and threatened to proceed to trial. And that’s where the question of whether the case was “winnable” before a jury again came into play, according to a source in the U.S Attorney’s Office, which shared the state attorney’s view that the prosecution was far from a slam dunk.

For one, it was clear from the start that Epstein would spare no legal expense and that his team of veteran lawyers, whose cases ranged from O.J. Simpson to the investigation of Clinton’s relationship with an intern, would play rough. When the Palm Beach police started to identify victims, according to Detective Joe Recarey’s report, Dershowitz began sending the detective Facebook and MySpace posts to demonstrate that some of these girls were no angels. Reiter’s deposition also states that he heard from local private investigators that Dershowitz had launched background checks on both the police chief and Det. Recarey. Dershowitz denies all of that. According to Reiter, both he and Recarey also became aware that they were under surveillance for several months, without knowing who ordered it. And the Florida victims began to complain that they and family members were being followed and intimidated by private investigators who were then linked to local attorneys in Epstein’s employ. In one reported instance, the private investigator claimed to be a police officer, and Reiter considered filing witness-tampering charges.

The credibility of the victims was also an issue; they had never complained of their treatment by Epstein until they were contacted by police, and they may have voluntarily returned to the Palm Beach mansion several times. Many of the girls came from disadvantaged backgrounds or broken homes, and they were susceptible to Epstein’s cash, intimidation, and charm. Those who were 16 when they went to El Brillo Way would have been in their 20s by the time they took the stand, and Epstein’s investigators had dredged up every instance of bad behavior in their pasts. According to an exchange in the Reiter deposition, a few of the victims had worked in West Palm Beach at massage parlors known as “jack shacks.” Each new compromising detail was immediately forwarded to the State Attorney’s Office, where staff met frequently with Epstein’s lawyers.

The Florida statutes are clear: Any person older than 24 who engages in sexual contact with someone under the age of 18 commits a felony of the second degree. The victim’s prior sexual conduct is not relevant; ignorance of her age is no defense. She needn’t resist physically to cast doubt on the issue of “consent.” For a child under 16, even lewd behavior short of touching is a felony of the second degree. But convincing a jury that a sexual encounter is a heinous crime is difficult if the victim can be made to appear willing and unharmed, not to mention vulgar and mercenary. It wasn’t hard to imagine some of the victims quickly being discredited in court by Epstein’s crack legal team, who repeatedly noted that the age of consent is lower in many other states.

But that doesn’t quite explain why the Department of Justice would forgo the child-trafficking charges, which pertain regardless of a girl’s attitude or character. Epstein’s final sentence is so out of line with the statutory guidelines for that crime that it appears the department may have been influenced by the existence of his many powerful friends and attorneys. A highly intelligent man who once taught math at the Dalton School in New York without a bachelor’s degree, Epstein has been a serious and respected player in the highest reaches of politics and philanthropy. He has made substantial contributions to political candidates, served on the Council on Foreign Relations, and donated $30 million to Harvard University.

Moreover, many of his high-powered acquaintances availed themselves of Epstein’s private jets, for which the pilot logs, obtained by discovery in the civil suits, sometimes showed that bold-face names were on the same flights as underage girls. A high-profile trial threatened to splash mud over all sorts of big players, just as both Gov. Richardson and Bill Clinton’s wife were running for president. Also, a hedge fund prosecution in which Epstein offered to give evidence was heating up. Alberto Gonzales, who was U.S. attorney general throughout most of the Epstein investigation and resigned just before the non-prosecution agreement was signed, told The Daily Beast that he “would have instructed the Justice Department to pursue justice without making a political mess.” But that may have been an impossible mandate, given the players involved.

Instead, said attorney Brad Edwards, “Epstein committed crimes that should have jailed him for most of his life…he was jailed for only a few months.” And this week he walks through his door a free man.

Conchita Sarnoff has developed multimedia communication programs for Fortune 500 companies and has produced three current events debate television programs, The Americas Forum, From Beirut to Kabul, and a segment for The Oppenheimer Report. She is a contributor to The Huffington Post and is writing a book about child trafficking in America.

Watch Jeffrey Epstein Storm Out of a Deposition When Asked About His Penis

From YouTube, on Jeffrey Epstein:

 [image is from here] I haven't read either book, and if anyone has, I'd be interested to know how helpful they are. I am always dubious about things like this, after watching an Oprah show. As you may know, Oprah Winfrey is a survivor of child molestation and incest and has worked to make sure predators are caught and arrested. The program featured mom's who had done all the right things in

Over at YouTube, just within the last few years, the place has gone from being an antifeminist video playland to also including a few profeminist and feminist videos and speeches. It's about time. What follows was posted by micksmum26  on February 24, 2010 ECD. She introduces this speech this way: Andrea Dworkin, feminist, gives a speech in Brighton, UK, in 1996 [on 10 November]. She discusses

 [photograph of Ruchira Gupta is from here] All that follows is from *here*. Ruchira Gupta is a journalist, activist, and policymaker who has worked relentlessly for the past 25 years to end human trafficking and to empower some of the most marginalized girls and women in the world. She is best known for leading girls and women in prostitution to advocate for their own change though Apne Aap

... and many are making pornography of the abuse. And white heterosexual men, among other het men, would like it very much if we all would please stop talking about it ASAP. And, especially, not call on other het men to hold one another accountable to these crimes against humanity. Fathers holding each other accountable. Imagine THAT. Imagine men untwisting their pants long enough to not be so

This man raped and burned his ten year old step-daughter. His name is Chris Newbury, and he is from Wichita, KS. He was caught in 2009: [image of this child rapist/incest perpetrating arsonist is from here] This next image is of a father who raped his daughters and made them bear his children, and killed his children who were also his grandchildren. 47-year-old Daniel  Rinehart faces charges of

 [image of white heterosexual male rapers and molesters of girls is from *here*] ***TRIGGER WARNING***: THIS MATERIAL MAY DEEPLY TRIGGER ANY SURVIVORS OF RAPE OR CHILD SEXUAL ASSAULT OR OTHER FORMS OF SEXUAL ABUSE BY ADULTS OR RELATIVES. Oprah's Conversation with Child Molesters: beyond what you saw on television today, if you watched. What follows is from www.oprah.com/oprahshow/

[image from the XPALSS website is from here] The following is a statement by the women of XPALLS. It is from *here* at their website. The "sex liberal" gig is up for white, privileged folks to speak FOR raped women, mostly poor and of color, in and now out of those heinous systems of male privilege and power used against and on female bodies who happen to also have souls that desire more than "

 [image of steel cross is from *here*]What follows is from *here*. Hidden from History: The Canadian HolocaustAn Open Letter to Brian Thorpe, Head Officer of the United Church of CanadaSun, 28 Apr 2002 (EDT) Dear Mr. Thorpe, In March, 1997, I was expelled from my livelihood as an ordained minister in your church because of public allegations I made concerning the murder of native children and