[kamasutra]

Trouble’s brewing in Germany. No, it’s not the euro crisis; it’s the good kind of trouble: Feminism is finding new life in networked voices online. Last week, a German blogger named Maike Hank put out a simple, defiant call to end harassment and daily sexism with her post, “This Is Not Normal.” It resonated deeply with many on Twitter, and people like Nicole von Horst started sharing their own stories: “The doctor that patted my ass, as I lay in the hospital after an attempted suicide.”


That’s when Anne Wizorek, founder of the blog kleinerdrei and digital media consultant (and, disclaimer, a very good friend of mine), recognized what was happening, and suggested a hashtag to capture the stories: #aufschrei (#outcry). And then all hell broke loose when an article came out in the magazine Stern stating that Rainer Brüderle, Germany’s minister for economics and technology, had allegedly sexually harassed a journalist.

read here
http://www.forbes.com/sites/deannazandt/...ith-women/

[Hades]

Quote:

Normally, we don’t talk about that– women are accused of playing the victim, of enjoying that victimhood, of using victimhood to win some other spoil. What spoil one wins there, I’m not sure.

Gender justice is not about victimhood, nor caricatures of gender roles or stereotypes, nor ending the fun for everyone.

I never did like it when journalists play dumb, but she seems to have a knack for it.

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

New York Times also recently had a hamsterrific article that suggested that, since German subsidies for stay-at-home mothers and multiple children were not improving its poor birth rate, feminism was necessary to get more women working full time, which would somehow magically improve fertility.

[scorpion]

The Germans would be better off with a return to the traditional attitude of "kinder, küche, kirche."

And if they weren't so ashamed of their Nazi past, they could take one of the actual good pages out of Hitler's playbook and award mothers medals based on the number of children they have.

Quote:

The Cross of Honor of the German Mother was conferred from 1939 until 1945 in three classes of order, bronze, silver, and gold, to German mothers who exhibited probity, exemplary motherhood, and who conceived and raised at least four or more children in the role of a parent.

...

1st Class Order, Gold Cross: eligible mothers with eight or more children
2nd Class Order, Silver Cross: eligible mothers with six to seven children
3rd Class Order, Bronze Cross: eligible mothers with four to five children

...

A number of small financial benefits including various privileges were bound to the honour, one example being preferential treatment, precedence and priority service within society and public services. As one recount recalls "…they were always given the best of everything: housing, food, clothing, and schooling for their children. Old people even had to give up their seats on the bus or streetcar. They were treated like royalty with the greatest respect. No standing in line for them. At the butchers shop the best cuts of meat would go into their baskets. A helper or nurse was assigned by the government to help them take care of the brood and arrived first thing in the morning". An annuity was also considered for a recipient mother of the decoration, but due to government budget constraints, this proved unworkable. Members of the Hitler Youth organization were also instructed; a wearer of the Mother’s Cross was to be honourably greeted (saluted) when encountered. The Völkischer Beobachter (People’s Observer) national newspaper (1938 Issue No. 25) stated: "…the holder of the Mother’s Cross of Honour will in future enjoy all types of privileges that we by nature have accustomed to our nations honoured comrades and our injured war veterans."

Look at that last paragraph there. Definitely sounds like they were victims of patriarchal oppression, doesn't it? Thank God today's modern woman is no longer held down like this, and is free to find fulfillment by pushing paper all day in a cubicle, riding the cock carousel until her late 30s, and finally squeezing a single, developmentally disabled child out of her desiccated womb and raising it without a father. Now that's progress.