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Learning to Speak Privilege

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!

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Cooter Couture

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)

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Anti-Trans, RadFem, Catholic Theologian Mary Daly Dies

Mary Daly died yesterday.

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.

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George, Meet James

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.”

Here’s the original.

Maybe I should have been George and not Helen after all.

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Crossdressed Protest

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)

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Viggo

What does it say about me as a feminist if I watch GI Jane solely to check out Viggo Mortensen’s legs?