We’ve got London Fog paring Christina Hendricks (Mad Men) down to size.
Which puts my “yay, the future!” optimism on hold. Because it’s always been okay for skinny white guys to do whatever they want, while women, and actual gay men, will continue to deal with this bullshit.
Okay, someone send me a story that cheers me up again.
To hell with Ken Mehlman, today Wisconsin is celebrating the 90th anniversary of Wisconsin’s signing of the 19th amendment! (I don’t know why they’re celebrating a week after the anniversary date. If anyone does, let me know. WI ratified in June, so it’s not that.)
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Once upon a time it was argued that we would make politics more moral, because women were, naturally, more moral. Ha!
This is a huge ick. We have to cut out this factory farming crap. Enough already.
A cool bunch of feminist links on global feminisms picked up a post of mine, and when I went to check it out, I was impressed by how international in scope it was, & how trans friendly. Cool beans.
No, really: why do so many cool people watch World Cup? There isn’t one woman on a team anywhere, & if any other industry were so blatant in its discrimination, so many people wouldn’t watch, & might actually be out protesting.
Not having women on World Cup teams isn’t discrimination, you say? How, exactly? Are the try-outs open to women? As far as I know (& I’m willing to stand corrected), there is no “separate but equal” league, or set of teams, that gets the same kind of attention, that represents their home countries on the world stage.
I will confess that it’s no skin off my nose not to watch because I don’t really like sports (and I’ve certainly got no truck with a field full of athletic men in shorts).
I’m not for quotas or lowering standards – though I’d ask my liberal friends to consider how full of shit that argument is when you apply it to any other category of human competition – just for opening the try-outs to women.
A little more than a week ago, John Tierney published an article in the NYT “daring” to question whether or not girls just aren’t good at math.
Maggie Koerth-Baker over at BoingBoing actually interviewed some female scientists on the topic. One of them, a Dr. Isis, had some great things to say:
John Tierney titles his article “Daring to Discuss Women’s Potential in Science,” as though he is bravely daring to out the dirty little secret that we all supposedly know deep in our hearts. Girls suck at math and science. The truth is, they really don’t. It’s just that John Tierney sucks at googling.
I love the idea of John Tierney publishing pie recipes instead:
Yet, he clearly has ignored the fact that this phenomenon is unique to the United States. Indeed, in countries with more gender equal cultural norms, the divide disappears. In Iceland, girls out perform boys in math and science. Japanese girls out perform American boys. Maybe in his next column Tierney will argue some type of evolutionary difference between the boys and girls in these other countries and American boys and girls. Personally, I would find it much more interesting if he would start posting recipes for pies we could make with all the cherries he’s picking.
and then:
Can we all agree that Tierny pulled this completely out of his ass? Someone who scores in the top 99.9% of an aptitude test is more likely to get tenure than someone who scores in the top 99.1% in the seventh grade? Really?
Honestly, the NYT had no business publishing a poorly-researched and obviously biased article. Let’s all keep in mind that Tierney has already written in defense of Summers, which indicates some pre-existing bias — other than the obvious sexist one, of course.
These guys tire me.
It’s going to be easy for women to hate on this lady, but she is in some ways the perfect case study when it comes to women & looks & employment. She’s suing Citigroup for firing her for being too hot.
Power to her.
When you read stuff like this, you have to wonder: do they just think they’re untouchable? Or do they not understand what’s offensive about saying stuff like this? Honestly, I don’t know.
A recent talk by J. Jack Halberstam on Gender Studies as a discipline, at The New School for Social Research:
There are times, as a woman, that if you actually manage to recognize your own humanity, instead of your use as a breeder*/parent, you still have to face the fact that people write articles like this explaining that you are not an asshole.
It’s astonishing.
Just try to imagine the same article with the word men in place of women: “Childless men have been able to accumulate education and resources they otherwise wouldn’t have had if they’d had children. This time and income could then be put back into other people’s families “to pay for lifesaving operations, or to rescue the family farm, or to take in a child whose mother had fallen gravely ill.”
I mean, really?!
And while this particular article is pro child-free women (albeit condescending), it amazes me that any argument has to be made that women are of value even when they aren’t parents, that many women choose to be childfree (for whatever reason) and/or that even women who wanted kids and didn’t have any (for whatever reason) can live satisfying lives.
Can we get back to ZPG ideas? Is it possible, even, for people to consider all this talk about being green when it comes to children? There are too many of us on this planet & we’re destroying it as a result, and we don’t have a goddamn chance if the value of women who don’t have children has to be explained.
What bullshit.
* to clarify, since someone objected to my use of the term breeder: i used the term breeder to point out that this is the way our culture thinks of women if articles like this have to be written. i don’t use the term otherwise, but i do think it’s highly problematic that someone might object to the term but not the attitude/culture that treats them that way. that is, the only evidence that the culture doesn’t consider women breeders, and breeders only, is if there is inherent value in a woman’s life when she isn’t a parent.
More money on mascara means less money donated to politicians who can do you favors.
More money on pedicures means less money for the non-profits like shelters, crisis centers, and halfway houses.
More money on haircuts means less money for more education & training.
More money on moisturizers, face lifts and boob jobs means less money, less influence, and less power.
Period.
I’m part of a panel discussion tonight, hosted by Lawrence’s Diversity Center, called “Women: Breaking Boundaries & Reaching Your Goals.” The other women on the panel are:
Professor Rosa Tapia
Amy Uecke, Acting Dean of Students
Yvette Dunlap, Asst. Superintendent AASD
Lyndsay Sund, Assc. Dir. Of Alumni & Constituency Engagement
Kathy Flores, Diversity Coord. for the Appleton Mayor’s Office
Maiyoua Thao, VP of Universal Translation & Staffing Inc.
I’m very much looking forward to hearing how these other women approached their own goals.
Fantastic rant from ultrageek over at Daily Kos:
She has courage. She has guts. She has a spine. She has tenacity. She has fortitude. BUT, she does NOT have balls. The inner feminist in me, long hidden in my workaday world, has been getting more and more irritated all day by the continual reference to Speaker Pelosi’s non-existent testicles.
Let me be clear: ONE DOES NOT NEED TO BE MALE IN ORDER TO GET THINGS DONE IN WASHINGTON . . .
It took someone with a uterus to make this happen, to bring this home.
And, while I’m at it, can we please stop talking about what a good looking woman she is? How she looks so young, and vibrant, and HOT?
JESUS CHRIST! WHAT DOES A WOMAN HAVE TO DO TO BE JUDGED ON HER OWN MERITS?
This woman brings home one of the most progressive pieces of legislation in 45 years, and we talk about her HOTness? Are you shitting me?
No, they are not shitting you, ultrageek; a woman’s hotness is still, surely, far more important than her accomplishments. (& We wonder why we can’t get more women into office.)
A few weeks back there was this NYT article about how women need to learn how to speak ‘nanny.”
The whole idea is fucked up in so many ways I can’t even articulate, but let me try: the idea of some women “buying” their freedom as a result of being able to pay other women to take care of their children is screwed up. The cultural differences are screwed up. The fact that most of the women who need to learn to speak nanny are bound to be rich white women – while their nannies are poor brown women – just pisses me off.
Take this paragraph, for instance:
The mother, at times beset by guilt, a touch of intimidation or feelings of her own maternal inadequacy, fails to articulate what she wants from the nanny — and then complains to friends, her spouse or an Internet message board when she doesn’t get it. (The father in many cases steers clear of the whole relationship.)
Wow, right? That little parenthetical is about as huge as Mrs. Ramsey’s death in To the Lighthouse, no? Yes, the father steers clear of it all. Now there’s your article, NYT!
Saturday is a good day to talk about vaginas, no? AlterNet seems to think so, with this lovely article about all the stuff the health & beauty industry thinks is wrong with yours, & how they can fix it: with surgery, bleach, dye, douches, deodorant, & mints. Yes, mints. They did forget one recent beauty aid, however:
Problem: Your vagina is plain.
Solution: Vajazzle.
Really, folks, you can get your beaver bejeweled now with tiny crystals to make it glitter like a disco ball.
That’s pretty much 7 quick paths to a yeast infection. None of these procedures is ever encouraged by anyone with a legitimate medical degree, and most of them can cause serious harm. Regular bathing & cotton panties may seem so old-fashioned, but it’s still what the best-kept vaginas are wearing.
(h/t to Diane for the vajazzling)
For those who were fans: Cagney & Lacey are going to be re-united on that hip spy series Burn Notice tonight; Sharon Gless, who played Cagney, is a regular on the show, on which she plays Michael Weston’s mom.
She resigned from her position at Boston College because she wouldn’t let male students into her Women’s Studies classes. feh.
From her Wiki entry:
Also in Gyn/Ecology, Daly asserted her negative view of transsexual people, whom she referred to as “Frankensteinian.” She labels transsexualism a “male problem” and claimed that post-operative transsexuals exist in a “contrived and artifactual condition.”[13] Daly was also the dissertation advisor to Janice Raymond, whose dissertation, published in 1979 as The Transsexual Empire, is critical of “transsexualism.” Transsexual activist Riki Wilchins has accused Daly of being transphobic.
Mostly we’ll just wait for the rest of them to go, too. Being an anti-trans feminist these days is about as logical as being against same-sex marriage: wrong side of history.
There’s a great video about how women’s bodies are represented in media that was just brought to my attention. It’s in Italian with English subtitles and worth watching. That said, some of the images are really upsetting (and all were broadcast on Italian television).
Wow, this is depressing to read. It’s also not even a little surprising.
In light of all that, then, I shouldn’t have been surprised that using a male pseudonym had such a dramatic effect on Chartrand’s career. Death threats and sexually degrading commentary directed at women writers seem very 21st century — so modern! so fresh! — but being paid half as much for the same work? Landing fewer jobs? Receiving more criticism and less respect? That just sounds so old-fashioned. I learned about women posing as men to get work in elementary school history lessons, not when I went to grad school for writing. The thought that if I’d tried writing as, say, Kevin Harding, I might have earned far more money, opportunity and authority than I have, is almost as inconceivable as it is chilling. Since the Brontë days, says Chartrand, “we’ve had feminism. We have the right to vote, to own property, to be members of Parliament and Congress, to get a job, and to be the main breadwinner of the family. And yet apparently we haven’t gotten past those 19th century stigmas.”
Maybe I should have been George and not Helen after all.
It’s kind of amazing, the idea of Iranian men wearing traditional head scarves to show their allegiance to the insurgence, but that’s what they’re doing.
Thus the new protest also speaks to the societal aspect of Iranian women being forced to accept a dress code, according to Dabashi.
“Proud to wear my late mother’s rusari, the very rusari that was forced on my wife in Iran, the very rusari for which my sisters are humiliated if they choose to wear it in Europe, and the very rusari that the backward banality that now rules Iran thinks will humiliate Majid Tavakoli if it is put on him — He is dearer and nobler to us today than he ever was.”
In a speech before his arrest, Tavakoli played on the theme of the day’s historical significance in light of current anti-government protests.
“We Iranian men are late doing this,” Dabashi said. “If we did this when rusari was forced on those among our sisters who did not wish to wear it 30 years ago, we would have perhaps not been here today.”
(thanks to Jade Catherine for the tip)
