If you get it, you'll love it

I learned of these gems through a few of the feminist websites I troll. Clever and way funny, all of them...

...on how yogurt ads are targeted to women (it's the only food acceptable for us disgusting females to eat)

...on wedding shows and the promotion of women as selfish children (even by, or maybe especially by, We!)

...on the political wooing of women's votes (we're all free now, considering we were all in for Hillary, since she is a woman, too)

I'm surfing around while waiting for pictures to load on Smugmug. More trip pictures really are coming soon...

Worth the two minute read, even if you're trying to dash off to another continent

Nails. It.

There are many reasons Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for "change." But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture.

h/t: laloca, who should keep reading the morning news

Training and Education

McCain feels that women don't need Fair Pay, they need "training and education."

I have a fantasy where his office is swamped -- a-la Harry Potter and letters from Hogwarts -- with resumes from thousands of well trained and educated women.

Help make this picture-perfect image a reality by signing up and sending here.

And while you're riding the activism wave, go on over here and tell the APA that naming Kenneth Zucker (yup, the maniac from the recent NPR series) to the position of Chair of the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders on the DSM-V Committee was a Really Bad Move. (h/t: GG)

V-Day. It's here for a reason.

Jessica at Feministing.com posted about the V-Day events happening in New Orleans this weekend, which is great. But then she notes that none of the websites' regular contributors could make it to the event, so she recruited outside of the area, and outside of the Gret Stet, actually, to liveblog the weekend.


What, are all the local feminists at French Quarter Fest and unavailable?

Did all the New Orleans' feminists evacuate and not come back after Katrina?

Were there not enough Women's Studies majors to chose from at Tulane?

What would have been wrong with the words of the thousands of women of New Orleans who will be attending the event?

And for those New Orleans' women who won't be attending due to their living in the poverty and isolation V-Day seeks to address, couldn't feministing.com have offered to sponsor a few... in exchange for some words about the event?


V-Day is celebrated as an International call to the importance of Women's Health; it is a performance piece that signifies a global movement. However, it is intentionally being done HERE, in NEW ORLEANS, featuring specific new monologues written about real women living HERE, because of the historical significance of our city's history and what it has meant in the lives of the women of this place. This aspect of the event should not be overshadowed or forgotten. As is the case with any story of poverty and loss, the ones who suffer the most are women and children. New Orleans continues to be the poster child for both of these ills; these monologues have significance to how our city and our people will be remembered. Part of a global movement, yes, but RIGHT NOW signifying an important step in our recovery.

I understand why feministing.com may want to keep writers whom they know and trust to adhere to the kinds of writing the website wants to reflect (I love feministing.com, learn from the posts, and enjoy reading it ... but yes, there was some criticism in that last sentence) --- but within this context, I am disappointed that the website authors determined that bringing in an outsider was more important than finding someone local. Someone who could truly talk about the new monologues using both a feminist (or maybe 'feministing') lens AND the understanding of what it means for those pieces to be performed HERE.

No offense to the friendly youth coming in for the weekend to cover it. I'm sure her reflections will be thoughtful. But will she be able to comprehend what it means for the hundreds of women who have not yet returned and were brought back for the weekend's events? Will she be able to capture the frustration, heartache, and loss that we in this place have come to recognize as daily aspects of life? Will she be able to contextualize how a monologue about 'a woman in New Orleans' can symbolize an entire city's struggle for rebirth? No offense, but no. And if you can't get that, well, you're missing a HUGE part of what this weekend means.


UPDATE: Jessica has offered to include reflections from local women regarding the event on her website (see comments). Thanks!

Is The Washington Post turning into The Washington Times?

Camilla Paglia and Ann Coulter, watch out -- here's another anti-feminist "feminist" set to steal your air time. via Feministing...

Charlotte Allen - a professional woman-hating hack from the Independent Women's Forum who has also oh-so-bravely attacked transgender rights, said that the answer to women's potential financial woes is marriage, and suggested that Hurricane Katrina might have been "the best thing" to happen to New Orleans which is full of "whiners...chisel[ing] us taxpayers" out of money - has outdone herself in an article that is all about what dumb f@&!s women are.

I'm sickened that the Washington Post is publishing this ridiculous nonsense.

Newsflash: women aren't men. Equality doesn't mean that we act like men. We're different, our bodies do different things, and our needs our different. This does not make us weaker (actually, we survive childbirth and infancy in greater numbers and we live longer). Thinking that women must act like men in order to be employed, gain respect, and enjoy careers is what creates unimaginable situations like this.

What is really galling is that the sort of misogynist garbage Allen puts out is equally damaging to men: you can't narrowly define the expression of one gender without narrowly defining the other (in her case, she's arguing a sex difference, but she's defining those differences according to tired, old gendered rubbish). Labeling women as emotional basket cases assumes the opposite in men. If women are emotional, men are stoic, and showing any inclination towards the other brings gender conflict: you're open for attack from the masses. Meaning that if a man shows emotion, he is feminized... and our society has a real problem with men who show any hint of femininity. By labeling women in one extreme, you put men in the other -- it is equally offensive and damaging to both. Not to mention that it ignores the fluidity of sex, gender, and their expression, which is better described on a continuum than in binary.

How I am going to raise both a boy and a girl through adolescence within all of this nonsense??

Not so fast, Hillary.

Apparently, for women to do anything in government, from voting, running for office, becoming president... maybe even for going to school or walking on the sidewalk?... there must be a specific clause referring specifically to sex that says it's legal for them to participate in such action. Or, at least, this yutzball thinks so. I agree with her; it's pretty hilarious.

Tin Roof, Rusted (Part II): Party Conversations

One of the people I most enjoyed was a wife of one of Paul's cooler co-workers, who is the Department head of the Math Department of a local high school and teaches AP Calculus and AP Statistics. She and I were discussing the importance of women in Mathematics and Sciences when she came out with this: "I have a class of 28, and each year, about 21 of them are female and all of them consistently outperform their male peers. Our student government is always female. So what I want to know is: WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING IN COLLEGE????"

A brilliant question placed so nicely within the observations and experiences of someone who faces it everyday. What is happening to women?

Once upon a time, Paul and I made similar observations about friends and acquaintences, noticing that they shared the same college: we joked that this particular university had a curious way of beating dreams and aspirations out of women. This particular university is also well-known for having faculty who openly have flirtations and affairs with students -- and write about it -- and maybe this isn't a coincidence. What happens in college, and what happens after, and why is it so toxic to the promising potential in the talents of women?

Maybe it isn't necessarily what happens in college, but is instead what happens afterward? She gets hired by Company X and gets stuck working with the guy with the roaming hands. This guy is pervasive everywhere and is typically one that everyone seems to like (or is maybe tolerated out of some strange peer-pressure fear), and while it's well-known that he is inappropriate, he remains untouched by an indifferent management (make the environment more friendly to women? what is that a requirement of management?) Worse, he may be her boss. Or, her boss totally ignores her, calling in for the first time on the day she resigns. She gets paid less than her male peers, receives less promotions, and is hounded on her personal life (marriage and kids makes a working girl distracted, ya know.) Are all of these things illegal? Well, maybe, but they are all active and real... as part of corporate culture as power ties and pumps. Maybe my use of the word 'corporate' unfairly fingers business, which is not my intent: it is even worse in academia.

So what does the world offer to women, professionally? Well, I'd argue it offers all that it offers to a man -- at a reduced pay, of course -- IF the woman is willing to act like a man.

For a woman to be successful, she must remain aloof, act tough, rough, and hard (which will label her a "cold bitch" but is preferred to the alternative, patronizing treatment). She is constantly observed for signs of female-ness: did she marry, buy a house, or (gasp!) have a baby!? These are all connected to risk within the robot-male business model, where one must have no emotion to any thing but the job, dedicate all time to it, and reject life outside of work. Forget that 30 hours a week of work is the most efficient, connected to more completed in a work week, healthier employees, and a better overall company: you are required to be at work, even if you're not doing anything at all, 12 hours a day, everyday. Not performing at this level is a feminine slip, a sign of weakness, and shows lack of dedication. Want to push back that 4pm meeting to 3pm so that you can make Tommy's soccer game? Tisk, tisk... your priorities are all messed up. (Incidentally, if your male boss makes the same request, he's just "being a good Dad.")

A day of sexual harassment, hours and hours of extra work with little reward, pay out of whack with peers, and diminished opportunities for advancement... who would willing and openly choose this life? Staying home with babies (who actually need to be with their Mothers for more than the ridiculous 6-week window) does not sound like a "choice" but a rational path made by smart women who are lucky to have enough resources available to them so that they do not have to endure the torture of a sexist, hostile work environment.

If the work world was structured to be family friendly: to offer part-time opportunities with benefits (or have university health care so that benefits were not a requirement for families), and work options that allowed for quality jobs with less hours and more flexibility; if maternity leave was reasonable; if childcare was affordable and on-site for nursing mothers... in short, if women and families were valued, then I believe more women would remain in professional positions in all fields. Women "choose" to leave the work force because there is no other choice to make. I don't think it a coincidence that so many women have part-time independent businesses, photography studios, craft endeavors, design consultant services: these are flexible areas where women can control their professional lives. Signs that women want to continue to develop themselves outside of their family identity and responsibilities, but cannot do so in the professional world. So they look for other places to do so.

So what happens to women to take them out of mathematics and sciences (and the professional world, in general?) Well, they get beaten. Enough licks and anyone with a ripcord will pull it to get out.

The whole situation sucks for men, too, who are expected to work, expected to find well-paid employment to support a family, expected to work too much, and expected to not notice that they are missed at home. What would it take to re-think how we work and who we expect to work? Is it too much to encourage young women to think beyond a life in homemaking and allow men to pursue art or craft-making without looking at him as irresponsible?