Old Feminist

"Controversial"

2012-03-01T15:51:43Z

So since everything women do that some men don't like gets branded as "controversial," I think we need to turn the tables.

Any time anyone says anything about Jesus or the Bible, that's controversial, because there are plenty of people who don't agree with it.

Any time anyone discusses morality, that's "controversial." Anything about sex including waiting until marriage or not using contraception? "Controversial."

Men not participating in child care? "Controversial."
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The REAL "Bubble Test"

2012-02-01T05:27:55Z

Charles Murray (of Bell Curve infamy) has come up with a test to decide if you live in a bubble. Of course the questions assume that the "real Americans" outside the bubble are small town White people.

So here is my bubble test. Suggestions welcome. I didn't include an answer key; you can figure out where I'm going with this, I'm sure.

Family and friends

Do you have a good friend who is Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, atheist, if you are not one of these? Female if you are male or male if you are female? Black or Hispanic if you are not one of those?
Were you ever in foster care? Have you had children in the foster system because you could not take care of them and you didn't have any other family members who had the financial resources to help?
Does your family of origin use a language other than English regularly?

Home

Has your house ever been foreclosed on?
Have you ever been evicted despite really, REALLY trying not to?
Have you ever lived in a place without appropriate heat, water, electricity, sanitation for longer than it would take to just find somewhere else to live?
Have you been homeless for more than a few days?
Did you ever miss school as a child because you weren't "really living anywhere"? or the "wrong" nationality?
Once you were an adult, have you stayed in a relationship with someone because you don't have the resources to live on your own?

Finance

Do you pay your bills in person? Do you pay bills at the last minute or late because you don't have a choice?
Have you ever gotten a payday loan?
Do you know how long it will take before they shut your service off?*
Do you use the computers at the library because they are free?
Have you ever been on government assistance?
Have you regularly shopped unironically at Goodwill or other secondhand stores, not because you might find something great and cheap to wear to work or the club, but because that's all you can afford?
Do you know what's a good deal and what's overpriced at the dollar store?* What do items cost at Family Dollar?
Do you never buy a brand name without a coupon? Is couponing not a "sport" for you but a way to budget your limited resources?
Do you regularly buy something at a store where people mostly speak a language other than English?
Have you regularly gone to the checkout with more than you can afford and asked the cashier to take off things until you have enough?
Did you draw pictures of popular characters because you didn't have the money to buy any of the merchandise?
What is the following brand: COBY.

Food

What does a food stamp look like?
Do you hunt, fish, trap or raise animals for food for yourself, rather than recreation?
Have you ever consumed something that wasn't quite right (dropped and irrevocably dirty, fouled by pests, picked out the spoiled/moldy/rotten parts) because it was all you had?
Have you gotten food from a food bank or at a shelter?
Have you foregone eating so that someone else in your family can eat?

Transportation

Are you technically operating a motor vehicle outside the law because of funds (e.g. vehicle not meeting standards, registration expired, no license, no insurance)?
Do you walk or take public transit to work or school even when you’d rather not?

Work

Ever been a temp for more than six months, or employed at a job where they keep you just under full time so you can’t get any benefits?
Have you had to reduce your standard of living because of joblessness or reduced hours at work?
Ever worked more than one full time job or multiple part time jobs that add up to more than one full time job, just to make ends meet?

The law

Have you ever restricted your actions because you fear being picked up by the police for no good reason?
Do you live or have you lived in a neighborhood which is not at all safe at night? During the day?
Have you been a victim of assault where the police shrug and say "what do you expect in that place at that hour" when it's a place and hour you can't really avoid, like your home or school or place of work?
Are you, or do you have a good friend, who has spent time in prison, or who has worked in the prison system?

*thanks to Antigone commenting on pandagon.net

"Distracting" is apparently a female-only characteristic

2012-01-08T00:17:34Z

An assistant principal at the Northwest School of the Arts in Charlotte, NC, had to apologize for implying his female dance students who wear spandex outside of class were teases and that the consequences were their fault:

"He explained that wearing leotards and tights in public places around the school would motivate the men to rape us," said the petition posted by a student and signed by dozens of others who attended the assembly. "He went on to say that once you are raped, you will be the talk of the town all because you chose to dress promiscuous."

Also

style="font-size: 12px;" face="Arial"> In his explanations, he went into great detail that girls dressed "provocatively" in dance wear is a distraction to many of the other students, as well as construction workers that routinely work repairs to the school.

This last bit about being a distraction is what they always fall back on. Supposedly no we're not saying you're doing anything "wrong"! Heavens no! Just that you're "distracting" other people by being all sexy and female and shit.

And supposedly men don't distract women because they don't dress like Fabio with an open shirt and exposed biceps.

Well let me tell you. There are dozens of distractions out there. That includes people dressed like they're nine-year-olds in sports clothing or Garanimals. That includes people dressed in colors that don't exist in nature and don't combine so well with each other. That includes people with weird haircuts. People with annoying verbal habits. People who tell stupid jokes and stories over and over and over. People who wiggle in their seats. People who have post nasal drip and make little throat clearing noises three times a minute all day.

So if we are dealing with all of that, you can deal with the fact that we have secondary sex characteristics that might not elude your notice. Being female and having a female body is not a crime and doesn't need to be hidden.

Good Men Project goes bad

2011-12-22T01:58:32Z

If you follow the feminist side of the blogosphere you will have already read discussion of the Good Men Project website and its founder Tom Matlack's article Being a Dude is a Good Thing where he claims women are always blaming men for everything and always picking on men, and subsequent meltdown over being called on his trite sitcom assertions without actually producing a shred of evidence to support his claims.

It was probably inevitable. Feminists don't write about femininity, at least not in the glowing terms that this and other "mascuilinity is good" sources do. They mostly talk about the pitfalls of adhering to traditional feminine and masculine roles as well as the positive things we can learn from either role, without requiring one be any particular sex or gender to use them.

But even if we were to take Tom's word for the whole "blaming men for everything" claim -- what does he expect us to do? We don't already blame men for everything. He says women think men should be more like women. How? What are we expecting men to do that they can't do? What are these "basic instincts" men have that women don't? I can't think of any.

He mentions a friend who's afraid to speak to his wife and doesn't make sudden movements or look her in the eyes when he does. is this familiar to ANYONE as a standard way men and women interact? Not me.

He says at the end of his Being a Dude is a Good Thing article that men are going to start to share their feelings. As if we don't know what feelings these guys have! You can't have it both ways. You can't say women react badly to your feelings and say you don't express them.

Alcohol Prohibition in the US and Women

2011-12-19T20:36:16Z

I started watching the series "Prohibition" on PBS.

Alcohol consumption in the US had always been commonplace, but when the distillation process took hold, those people who used to have low-alcohol beer for breakfast, lunch, dinner and before bed were suddenly getting snockered on whiskey.

And at least at first, drinking this way was almost always done by men. Men were the ones spending their money in taverns, and without their participation in the home's economy, women and children were carrying the weight of supporting the home. As a result they'd lose their homes or even go hungry.

Of course when women rose up against liquor it was assumed by some that women were just a bunch of spoilsports. But the cost to families by this new way of drinking was pretty steep and women ended up paying a lot of it.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that, right after they presented this view, they then blithely go forth to claim that immigrants to the US were unhappy with Prohibition. They didn't want others telling them what to do and they enjoyed drinking. I have to wonder if this is just the voice of the immigrant men.

Who mugged Chris Hitchens?

2011-12-17T17:02:05Z

There's a saying that a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged. I've wondered for some time, who mugged Chris Hitchens?

And I think it was himself.

He was a tireless, even compulsive, writer. Yet at some point he became tired of writing in support of Leftist views. As his tenure at The Nation came to a close, he lacked inspiration. As Ian Parker said in The New Yorker:

...our conversation began with events in 2001. By that year, Hitchens said, he had begun to doubt if his future lay in political journalism. He had, by then, published fifteen books, including one on the Elgin Marbles dispute, and slim, scornful volumes—modern versions of eighteenth-century pamphleteering—making the case against Henry Kissinger (mass murderer), Bill Clinton (sex criminal), and Mother Teresa (friend of despots). He had written, but not yet published, an admiring book about George Orwell’s political clear-sightedness. He had a column for Vanity Fair, in addition to his “Minority Report” for The Nation, which he had started in 1982, a year after moving to America. But, he said, political commentary had become “increasingly boring. There were times when I was due to write a Nation column and I hadn’t got a hugely strong motive to write.” He no longer described himself as a socialist, an identity he had formed as a teen-ager, in the late sixties. He had taken to describing capitalism as the world’s only true revolutionary force.
“I was becoming post-ideological,” Hitchens recalled.

An anti-authoritarian, he first applied his talents to the Right, but he also questioned the authorities of the Left. He wouldn't be the first to be disappointed that the followers of the Left are no less vulnerable to sheeplike unquestioning devotion than those of the Right.

I believe he must have eventually tired of his own authority, shoring up the certitude of the Left. There was nothing to do but to challenge it. Like a detective becoming a bank robber, a churchman become libertine, he knows where all the cracks in the foundations lie.

Was this conscious? I wonder. It seems more likely he saw looming before him endless questioning and shifting sands and decided to stay on dry land.

So Long Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-16T15:27:54Z

I went to see him several times and have a couple of signed books.

He was a dick about a lot of things, but he was an intelligent and articulate voice for atheism and mostly quite entertaining. He will be missed, and fuck cancer.
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Plan B over the counter for those under 18

2011-12-13T17:48:18Z

As probably everyone knows, US Health and Human Services Secretary Sibelius basically vetoed plan B over the counter for those under 18. The purported reason is that 11 year olds may not understand the directions, despite a study showing that those 11 to 17 in aggregate actually do understand the directions just fine.

A lot of the discussion on the web seems to fall along the same lines as discussions about abortion. "I would want to know if my daughter had an abortion/got Plan B because I would want to help her."

Instead of talking about what we want young people to do because we think we know better than they do how their lives work, can we not just get the fuck out of the way and let them do what they want? At least when it comes to their own bodies and topics they're not likely to want to raise with their parents?

Yes, maybe they will make a mistake that their parents wish they hadn't. That mistake is THEIRS TO MAKE.

The only "mistake" that would result from allowing them to use Plan B would be their not getting pregnant. There's no evidence that availability of EC causes more carelessness in EC use. In fact, the most common reason for using EC is to backstop failure of a condom.

The law should not be micromanaging to try to maximize a good result for everyone's decisions or to make a parent's decision more important than that of the girl who is pregnant.

We don't legislate who gets to drive what kind of regular passenger vehicle (aside from you have to have a license) because we think someone who has children should get a sedan or minivan instead of a Corvette, or keep people under 25 from having fast cars because they will just speed and get into trouble.

Harassment = Affairs?

2011-12-06T02:25:09Z

I don't know if anyone got this kind of response, but a friend of mine categorized Cain's affair and the harassment as the same thing! Like "who cares if he had affairs."

As if women's consent means nothing.

Headdesk.
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So long Cain

2011-12-03T21:45:50Z

Herman Cain announced he is taking a little time out from campaigning.

So is there any scenario where he comes back? This year?

I can't imagine one.
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Linkspam

2011-12-03T05:41:24Z

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/violence-against-women-is_1_b_1121001.html

Violence against women is a global pandemic? Like H1N1? Like in Contagion? No way. Think of your instinctive response to the idea of a worldwide bio-terror -- that's what your response should be to the normalized level of violence against women around the world. Because, here's the thing: women are not a special interest group and fighting for the ability to live without violence is not a pet project.

Think I'm exaggerating, don't you? Until I became aware of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, which kicked off on November 25, I might have thought so, too. That's because we, as a culture, embrace the glamourization of misogyny instead of considering its ill effects and trying to change norms. As far as collective awareness goes, we'd rather pass -- sexy is so much more fun than sad.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/27/first-ever-all-womens-ufo_n_1115052.html

The first annual Women's UFO Symposium is gearing up to offer a new perspective and restore balance to the growing world of gatherings where people present their ideas and experiences in UFOlogy.
"Women are not on the forefront of many UFO conferences. It's kind of an old boys club," said symposium organizer Paola Harris.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2011/12/02/woman-charged-with-self-abortion-after-fetus-found-in-trash/

New York City police charged a 20-year-old woman with first-degree self-abortion after she allegedly terminated her pregnancy by ingesting an herbal drink, according to WABC-TV.

Police arrested Yaribely Almonte on Wednesday and charged her after her fetus was found dead in the trash outside her Washington Heights building. Self-abortion is a misdemeanor in New York, and according to the state statute, the charge applies if a woman “commits or submits to an abortional act upon herself which causes her miscarriage” after 24 weeks unless a physician states an abortion is medically necessary to save the woman’s life. If convicted, Almonte faces up to a year in jail.

OWS for men?

2011-12-03T05:16:56Z

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/30/occupy-wall-street-women-voices?newsfeed=true

This week marked an important step. On Monday, after a number of women complained of "overly aggressive" men dominating events, OWS has, for the first time, instigated a series of female-led meetings where only women can speak. It was an opportunity for "males to listen and for female marginalised voices to be heard," Holder said.
The meeting at Wall Street, attended by around 20 women and 15 unusually silent men, was the first such gathering.
"There is a high level of awareness to include female voices" said Holder, who said the women-led meeting was voted on and agreed to by men.
At that point, as if to underline the issue, a commotion broke out as a white man burst into the centre of the female-led circle, demanding to speak, and angrily accusing all around him of sexism and racism.
"I'm allowed to speak," he shouted, as another man tried to usher him out of the circle. "You're allowed to be sexist? To get away with this crap?"

And as if to underscore male entitlement, one commenter on this story, a man of course, comments four times (out of 15 comments) that the idea of having one meeting where men can't speak is sexist and bigoted and unnecessary.

Thanksgiving work

2011-11-24T23:35:52Z

When I was a kid, it was normal in my family for the women to do all the work for Thanksgiving dinner and the men to sit around drinking beer, watching football, receiving snacks, and waiting for the main meal. It was normal for most other families, too.

Surprisingly (or maybe not), when I look at my Facebook feed, which includes a fair number of enlightened people, Thanksgiving still seems much more of a day not off for women.

Women getting up early to start the turkey. Women who did their baking yesterday. Women who are getting their food ready to carry to the family gathering place. Women asking, after six hours of kitchen labor, is it okay to have a glass of wine yet? Shit.

Sure, there's the occasional macho turkey deep fry going on, but even that only means that that one item is done by the men, outdoors. Like cooking on the grill, it is dangerous, glamorous, and limited in scope and time and if you don't have a beer in your hand your doin it rong.

And some men do get involved like women traditionally have. But most all of the boring drudgery of cooking the side dishes, setting the table, cleaning up, not to mention the connection and emotional work, is done by the women.

How far we have not come.

A hesitant step into the right wing world

2011-11-23T16:29:23Z

Today, home from work, channel surfing, I ran across a local radio show which broadcasts its right wing radio host on its associated TV station.

Its host has been on the air locally since the 70s. When he started he was just a bog standard Republican talker and the radio station carried both him and a centrist Democrat host. When Rush got big, though, in the early 80s, he decided that was the way to go, and that's his schtick now. They canned the centrist, of course.

So far I have learned:

Al Sharpton is a "race hustler" and makes a lot of money off it. Also he ate some blueberry pie. But now he denies it. Eventually he will admit it, but "it's a process." This is funny.

Chris Matthews once said he had a tingle in his leg for Obama. Later he retracted that statement. This is funny.

On the release of 5000 more global warming emails, a website owner guest (Mark Morano) burbles out the following: The United Nations is hiding data, making sure it won't be released, cherry-picking, "behaving badly." The global warmists think this will be devastated. President Obama has been forced to abandon "Kyoto level warming." The EPA will impose a carbon tax on humans declaring the CO2 we exhale from our mouths to be a pollutant and charging us for it. In 2008 the Supreme Court allowed the government to regulate CO2 which is actually "plant food." Folly and arrogance. Scientists are saying spitting is the same as doubling the CO2 in the environment. It's like painting a window black. Additional coats make no difference. This is a political and social narrative at its heart and science comes second. This is about the elites wanting to rule everybody and put resources in the hands of government. Countries like Australia, South Africa, England, Canada and the United States are mentioned as the ones standing between us and this horror. Al Gore says we're all gonna die, all gonna melt, Florida will be half under water, but he has now changed to saying we'll have storms, just like when people said that a witch caused bad weather. The dust bowl proves there's no global warming. In the 1930s it was a lot warmer. They want to tax climate and temparature and weather to appease angry gods which will lessen the bad weather. There is no way to get a good picture of earth's climate, so we can't tell if this is actually warm, and if you go back to get proxy data from the medieval period it proves it. Caller wants to know when they will outlaw dry ice. Webmaster says they will outlaw soda cans. Coke is selling white coke cans which contribute to this nonsense. People hunting polar bears proves they are not endangered.

I can only hope that the advertisements for toe fungus laser and Executive Leather Coats for $159.99 mean not too many people are listening.

How workplace or school sexual harassment hurts everyone

2011-11-14T20:19:59Z

When someone sexually harasses others in a work or school environment, they're hurting almost everyone in that environment.

The obvious primary victim is the person being harassed. But it goes further.

Let's imagine this is a typical man-on-woman harassment. Other women who work in the same department will probably learn about it and avoid that harasser. They can end up being branded difficult or uninterested in advancing their careers, when basically they just don't want to spend time with a guy who's going to grab them. Men will not have the same hesitation to work with him because he doesn't grab them.

The company will lose the extra participation of those women and so it will lose out as well.

If the harasser is in a hiring position he can hire women who tickle his fancy rather than getting the job done. Company's money wasted on underqualified women. And men working there may not realize the reason it seems like "women just can't do this job well" is because they were selected for something other than their work abilities.

Other men at the company will be treated with suspicion by women who know about the harassment, especially if the harasser isn't stopped and punished. Interaction will be artificially stifled, especially in informal situations, overtime, weekends, when a lot of the bonding between employees takes place.

This is what is meant by a hostile environment. You can't get as much done in an atmosphere of fear and distrust.

Why women belong in business

2011-11-11T23:00:15Z

In an article about why Penn State officials didn't call the police, William Pollack, Ph.D is quoted as saying:

...female groups tend to connect around doing the right thing. “When women get together,” says Pollack, “they assess what the right or best thing is, and then decide as a group how to accomplish it.

“But male groups bond by suppressing shame and promoting the idea that their group is invulnerable,” he continues. “So their focus is on one another and not—in this case—the victim.”

If this is true, then think about which kind of group would actually get more work done.

A failure of empathy in State College PA

2011-11-10T16:52:47Z

Joe Paterno, football coach at Penn State, is being ousted before he can finish his last coaching season because he didn't do enough to stop his subordinate, Jerry Sandusky, from abusing a string of underage boys.

Apparently this is a big freakin deal to some Penn State students there. Big enough to have a riot involving turning a TV truck over. Apparently football is more important than integrity and making a statement about what will not be tolerated. Apparently we can tolerate someone not doing enough to protect sexually abused kids and bring their abuser to justice if he is an old and beloved coach.

One of the news stories I heard on the radio this morning mentioned that Paterno was one of the first football coaches to actually want to make sure his players were doing well in the classroom as well as on the field. He would talk to his players' professors to see how they were doing and if they passed their tests. He came from the Ivy League and wanted his players to actually get an education.

This habit actually makes Paterno look bad, because his whole style was to follow up on everything. Yet he failed to follow up on the reports of Sandusky's sexual abuse of minors. He passed the information along and did nothing else. Sandusky remained in his position for years afterward, and Paterno knew he should have been removed. And did nothing about it.

Justice delayed is justice denied. That's part of the education these protesting students still need to learn.

HIding behind Wifey's skirts

2011-11-08T14:47:09Z

Herman Cain is still playing the denial game on his sexual harassment accusations. About the latest, he (I guess inevitably) claims his wife knows he wouldn't do that:

"The things that woman described, that doesn't even sound like you!" he quoted his wife saying,

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/67822.html#ixzz1d7m1IZAq

Of course he's not going to talk to his wife the way he talks to a woman he is dogging!

The fact is, men like Cain get off on harassment partly because it's different from the relationship they have with their wives. "Dirtier." You say things to women you fuck around with that you'd never say to your wife, do things you'd never do with your wife. That gives it its extra special zing.

Doesn't anyone remember the argument still put forth, that prostitution is necessary because wives won't give their husbands a little head? Madonna versus whore is alive and well in these guys' minds.

Speaking to FOX News Radio's Bill O'Reilly, the Republican presidential candidate also said his wife of 43 years had been "disgusted" by the allegations, the Los Angeles Times reported.

"She is disgusted that this has happened. She is disgusted with how the story has been twisted," Cain said of his wife Gloria.

"She is still 200 percent supportive of me and she is still 200 percent my wife. So she's handling it."

Read more: http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpps/news/herman-cain-says-he-will-set-the-record-straight-dpgonc-20111108-fc_15849131#ixzz1d7mNhzVx

This is pretty funny. I would think she'd be up to 400 percent by now. Denial is a river that's hard to stop drinking from.

I do have some sympathy for the women married to these shits. It can't be fun lying to yourself, wondering when the next scandal will break, if he'll bring home a disease or the other woman will bring out a baby. And of course we don't even know what she really said, because we only have his word on it.

But if it's true she's denying other women's experience to feel more comfortable about herself and her relationship, she's just enabling Cain to harass and lie again.

Ranking the sin of sexual harassment -- it could be worse, Herman Cain could be gay.

2011-11-08T01:47:43Z

Amanda Marcotte posted on busting the lie that Republicans really care about sexual harassment here at Pandagon. It really didn't take long for the GOP to move from "it didn't happen" to "so what if it did."

Some statistics I commented with:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2011-11-07/poll-romney-cain-harassment/51109760/1

If accusations [of sexual harassment] were proved, 53% say they definitely would not vote for that candidate; 42% [of conservatives] say they would still consider supporting him or her.

Let's put this in perspective. Among the conservative population:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/26611/some-americans-reluctant-vote-mormon-72yearold-presidential-candidates.aspx
(scroll down for comparison of liberal, moderate, conservative)

71 percent would refuse to vote for an atheist.
64 percent would refuse to vote for someone gay or lesbian.

Yep. Being gay is 12 percent worse than sexually harassing someone, and being an atheist is 29 percent more disqualifying than actually committing a sexual crime.

Math is hard?

2011-11-06T15:57:26Z

I used to have problems with math in early elementary school. Arithmetic, really, because it seemed sort of arbitrary.

Once I started to see patterns in it, though, once we learned sets and logic and stuff, I was way into it. I didn't really learn my times tables until Algebra when I was on fire to understand it and I realized I had to know them to play this fascinating new game.

So it's especially annoying when someone "explains" math to me that I not only already understand, but understand better than they do. Not surprisingly, it's usually men who do this.

This has happened at work a couple of times recently.

The first example is someone trying to use statistics to prove something that the statistics didn't prove at all. When I questioned his underlying assumption he assured me he was really good with Excel and if I wanted he could help explain his spreadsheet. No, asshole, actually the problem is your baseline assumptions which are driving your interpretation.

The second actually came in two parts. Part one was where someone I worked with was trying to figure out a code, basically where a number in a vendor's database represents a real value we can look up, but it's not a simple translation. He spent weeks on this, literally, just retrying an assumption that clearly failed -- that the association between the two is was a simple y = mx + b relationship.

Looking at the data (in Excel) made it obvious this wasn't true, but he just kept trying different values for m and b hoping it would work. When I asked to see the data he "patiently" explained that it was "complicated' and that he had talked to several other people we work with who are DBAs! and they didn't have an answer yet! But they were "close." So not to worry about it.

He left the company and I looked at his test data, finally, and within half an hour I had an equation to do the conversion. Looking at his emails back and forth with the DBAs, it is obvious none of them had any idea what to do if they couldn't just plug it into a formula they already knew.

Oh, and part two? When he left the company, he wanted some data sent to him. But didn't want me to do it because he didn't think I could write data to a disk.