When Angry Commenters Find Common Ground
Photo: Mikemol (CC)
A lot of visitors to disinformation could learn a lesson from these two. Joanna Schroeder, a feminist, and David Byron, an anti-feminist, write at the Good Men Project:
JS: So, David, you and I have a pretty interesting history, don’t we?
DB: I have talked with feminists on-line for years, and been thrown off hundreds of feminist sites. I am always looking for someone I can talk to, but I didn’t think you were a good prospect at first.
JS: Yeah, maybe I wasn’t at first. I have always been open-minded, but I started off pretty righteous.
As far as I remember it, you and I first met online at The Good Men Project in the comments section of a piece I wrote called The (Quiet) FeministRevolution. I was pretty sure I had written something so deeply based in common sense, that the whole world would read it and say, “Oh wow, now I…
Patriarchy Is Dead
From 2010, Nichi Hodgson writing for the Guardian:
From reclaiming the F word to objecting to objectification – there’s a new feminist army determined to finally flatten the patriarchy. But here’s the really radical news: patriarchy is dead. It’s dead simplistic, dead inaccurate, and no longer a useful way of framing gender inequality in the UK. Forget about castrating patriarchy – it’s time to corral kyriarchy, the system identified by Harvard theologian Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, which explains how ethnicity, class, economics and education, as well as gender, intersect to oppress us all, men as well as women.
So, kyriarchy: the substitution of one elitist, etymological hair-splitting term for another, I hear my newly estranged sisters cry – just what feminism needs. But this is a neologism with a difference. Where patriarchy – literally, rule of the father – explains only how traditional male authority dictates to, and subjugates women, kyriarchy (from the…
The Industry of Hunger
Photo: Tawheed Manzoor (CC)
Vandana Shiva on Al Jazeera English explains how, as mega-chains venture into industrial farming, they have created an epidemic of hunger- and generated billions in profit.
New Delhi, India – In November 2011, when the UPA government announced that it had cleared the entry of big retail chains such as Walmart and Tesco into India through 51 per cent Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail, it justified the decision saying that FDI in retail would boost food security and benefit farmers’ livelihoods.
But the assurance that FDI in retail would ease inflation did not resolve the political crisis the government was facing; it deepened it. Parliament was stalled for several days of the Winter Session, after which the government was forced to withdraw its decision.
The story of FDI in retail goes back to 2005, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed an agriculture agreement with the US, along with…
The Glaring Omissions Of iPhone’s Siri
Apple’s new iPhone 4S has made waves for its voice-commanded virtual assistant, personified as “Siri”. However, users have noticed that Siri seems to have a blackout concerning certain topics — is Apple pandering to the Christian Right? Via Amadi Talks:
The recent illustrations of Siri, the iPhone 4S voice-recognition based assistant, failing to provide information to users about abortion, birth control, help after rape and help with domestic violence has gotten a lot of notice.
Siri can answer a lot of health related questions perfectly well, why shouldn’t we expect it to be able to answer reproductive health related queries too? Why treat reproductive health as a walled-off garden that the general public can’t or shouldn’t be exposed to?
How Patriarchy and Rape Culture Hurt Men
Via the SAFER Blog:
I’ve often found myself trying to explain to people that rape culture and patriarchy aren’t just bad for women. If you draw attention to a form of violence that is primarily aimed at women by men, and a form of social oppression that is intended to provide men with dominance over women, a lot of people will think you must be hostile to men, or want to take something away from men. Nothing could be further from the truth. Patriarchy and rape culture are clearly more harmful to women, but they also cause men great harm, and I engage in anti-violence work to help men as much as I do to help women or anyone else. Here’s why:
The patriarchal “ideal” of male toughness and invulnerability creates the following problems for men:
- Men are often expected to endure hazardous conditions, with the attitude that any expression of fear is a sign…
A Browser Extension That Flips Gender
Danielle Sucher’s Jailbreak the Patriarchy is a Chrome extension that substitutes the word “women” for “men” and “he” for “she” and so on within all text. The results are thought provoking — toggle between a patriarchal and matriarchal online world with the click of a button:
Jailbreak the Patriarchy genderswaps the world for you. When it’s installed, everything you read in Chrome (except for gmail, so far) loads with pronouns and a reasonably thorough set of other gendered words swapped. For example: “he loved his mother very much” would read as “she loved her father very much”, “the patriarchy also hurts men” would read as “the matriarchy also hurts women”, that sort of thing.
This makes reading stuff on the internet a pretty fascinating and eye-opening experience, I must say. What would the world be like if we reversed the way we speak about women and men? Well, now you can find out!
The Golden Age Of Female Computer Programmers
Via the blog of software developers Fog Creek, a look at the forgotten history of women programmers, and the strange ways in which different work fields are labeled as “male” or female”:
Computer science has always been a male-dominated field, right? Wrong.
In 1987, 42% of the software developers in America were women. And 34% of the systems analysts in America were women. Women had started to flock to computer science in the mid-1960s, during the early days of computing, when men were already dominating other technical professions but had yet to dominate the world of computing. For about two decades, the percentages of women who earned Computer Science degrees rose steadily, peaking at 37% in 1984.
In fact, for a hot second back in the mid-sixties, computer programming was actually portrayed as women’s work by the mass media. Check out “The Computer Girls” from the April 1967 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. It…
Women and Disbelief
A long-running critique of the New Atheist movement has been how strikingly male-dominated it is. Victoria Bekiempkis over at Bitch Magazine explores the intersection between feminism and atheism:
Women are God-fearing and don’t challenge institutions. Men, on the other hand, are skeptical and rational, and go out of their way to publicly call bullshit on faith and religion — which is why today’s well-known secular thinkers, especially in the ranks of the New Atheism movement, are all male.
These statements should sound ridiculous because, of course, they are. From Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the founder of American Atheists, whose 1963 Supreme Court lawsuit brought an end to prayer in public schools, to Sergeant Kathleen Johnson, who started an organization for atheists in the United States military, to Debbie Goddard, founder of African Americans for Humanism, countless women have worked as successful atheist activists. They’ve penned books, run organizations, and advocated on behalf of religiously…
1915 Anti-Women’s-Suffrage Newspaper Ad
Courtesy of Sociological Images, a 1915 Massachusetts newspaper ad in opposition of giving women the right to vote — it’s fascinating how closely some of the political framing recalls that of today, including playing up fears of divorce, socialists, and Mormons.
(One would presume that the ad was effective, as Massachusetts’ male voters rejected women’s suffrage. Women were given the ability to vote five year later by the federal government in the form of the 19th Amendment.)
Are These Evolution’s Future Sluts?
SlutWalk protest in Toronto, 3 April 2011. Photo: Anton Bielousov (CC).
Violet Blue explains why the new SlutWalk protests are “a significant tipping point in cultural evolution” — and she’s serious. “Yes: I think scantily clad girls marching in the streets around the world are agents of change for our species.”
It started in April when a Toronto cop said that to stay safe from rape, women “should avoid dressing like sluts”. Soon “my clothes are not my consent” protests erupted, and the event “had an international identity within a few months,” representing “a huge reclamation and restatement about boundaries and women’s bodies.”
Now sex workers, young exhibitionists, high-heel feminists and random pissed-off women are marching “for the right to dress as they like while having their boundaries respected,” and Violet calls them the true punk rockers — the disruptors. “They’re the ones with the brass ovaries enough to dress like sluts and…
Sweden Debuts Gender-Neutral Preschool
At best, a school model for the more-enlightened future, and at worst, an intriguing social experiment. Via Yahoo News:
At the “Egalia” preschool, staff avoid using words like “him” or “her” and address the 33 kids as “friends” rather than girls and boys.
From the color and placement of toys to the choice of books, every detail has been carefully planned to make sure the children don’t fall into gender stereotypes.
Egalia doesn’t deny the biological differences between boys and girls — the dolls the children play with are anatomically correct. What matters is that children understand that their biological differences “don’t mean boys and girls have different interests and abilities.”
The taxpayer-funded preschool which opened last year in the liberal Sodermalm district of Stockholm for kids aged 1 to 6 is among the most radical examples of Sweden’s efforts to engineer equality between the sexes from childhood onward. Breaking down gender roles is…
Kansas: The First Abortion-Free State?
Kansas is apparently set to become conservative Christianity’s Mecca. Via Mother Jones:
If new guidelines from the Kansas health department are enforced, the last three abortion clinics in the state could be forced to shut their doors this summer. A court fight over the rules is almost inevitable. But anti-abortion groups like Operation Rescue are already claiming success in making Kansas “the first abortion-free state.”
The state’s latest approach—with its remodeling requirements and so forth—is often referred to as “Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers.” TRAP laws are intended to make it difficult, if not impossible, for clinics to operate, and they have become increasingly common around the country.
The new requirements require facilities to add extra bathrooms, drastically expand waiting and recovery areas, and even add larger janitor’s closets, as one clinic employee told me—changes that clinics will have a heck of a time pulling off by the deadline. Under the new rule,…
Madame Restell: The Wickedest Woman in New York
Madame Restell was a flamboyant 19th century abortionist whom history remembers as ”the wickedest woman in New York” —but had she been? Victorian Gothic takes a critical look:
The cover of The New York Illustrated Times for February 23rd, 1878 depicts the arrest of the notorious abortionist Ann Lohman, alias “Madame Restell,” by the moral crusader Anthony Comstock. Flanked by reporters and deputies, the statuesque crime-fighter is pictured with a search warrant in hand, which he reads to the lady villain in the attitude of a holy messenger, banishing evil by its sacred words. Comfortably situated amongst the opulent furnishings of her Fifth Avenue mansion, Madame Restell wears a cool, appraising expression, as if to say “Ah, Comstock, my nemesis—I have been expecting you.” Her right hand is clenched into a fist, which overlaps the womb of a veiled woman who weeps with shame in the background.
Dubbed the “wickedest woman in New…
Religious Newspaper Removes Hillary Clinton From Situation Room Photo
Minor controversy erupted after people noticed that a Brooklyn-based, ultra-Orthadox Jewish newpaper’s version of the iconic “Situation Room” photograph had Hillary Clinton mysteriously vanished.
The story is an interesting and ironic example of a number of things — the literal erasing women’s accomplishments, and religious fundamentalists’ use of technology in postmodern fashion in their efforts to turn back society’s clock. From New York’s Daily News:
A Hasidic newspaper got into the business of revisionist history Friday when it printed a Situation Room photo that was doctored to remove Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The Brooklyn-based publication Der Zeitung published the now iconic photo showing only men present to monitor a daring 40-minute Navy SEALs raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, the world’s most wanted terrorist. National Security team member Audrey Tomason was also scrubbed from the historic image.
As a rule, Der Zeitung does not run images of women that could be considered “sexually suggestive,” Jewish…
Punk Icon Poly Styrene Dies
Feminist punk innovator Poly Styrene, former frontwoman for the British band X-Ray Spex, has succumbed to cancer at age 53, Pitchfork reports. Born Marian Joan Elliott-Said, Styrene broke boundaries in the macho realm of punk rock, influenced future generations (i.e. the riot grrl movement) and made a batch of extremely catchy music. In her words, “I said that I wasn’t a sex symbol and that if anybody tried to make me one I’d shave my head tomorrow.”
Below, from the documentary Punk in London, performing circa 1977.
Why Do Girls Wear Pink?
No, it’s not an immutable law of nature. In the 1920s, retailers began encouraging pink (a strong color) for boys and blue (a dainty one) for girls, before the trend reversed after World War II. For centuries prior, both boys and girls wore white dresses.
In light of hysteria over a photograph in J. Crew’s new catalog depicting a mother painting her son’s toenails pink, Smithsonian Magazine explores how we got to this point:
For centuries, children wore dainty white dresses up to age 6. “What was once a matter of practicality—you dress your baby in white dresses and diapers; white cotton can be bleached—became a matter of ‘Oh my God, if I dress my baby in the wrong thing, they’ll grow up perverted,’ ” Paoletti says.
The march toward gender-specific clothes was neither linear nor rapid. Pink and blue arrived, along with other pastels, as colors for babies in the mid-19th century, yet the…
The Anomalisation of Male Rape
From Feminist Critics:
Feminists, do not focus upon male rape generally, or male prison rape in particular. This is unsurprising, and not, in itself, particularly problematic.
What is problematic with feminist discourse about male rape is not that they don’t discuss it at all – clearly they do – or that they don’t discuss it enough. The problem is that they anomalise it, that is to say, they treat it as some kind of anomalous variant of rape which, according to them, is something which normally happens to women. The latter is simply “rape”. Rape that happens to men in prison is “prison rape”. Rape that happens to men outside of prison is “male rape”. The word “female” is sometimes used as an adjective with “rape” to contrast it with male rape, but “female rape” is not used by feminists as a category designation in and of itself. It’s just “rape”. “Male rape” and “prison…
Rape Culture 101
Melissa McEwan writes on shakesville:
Frequently, I receive requests to provide a definition of the term “rape culture”…
Rape culture is rape being used as a weapon, a tool of war and genocide and oppression. Rape culture is rape being used as a corrective to “cure” queer women. Rape culture is a militarized culture and “the natural product of all wars, everywhere, at all times, in all forms.”
Rape culture is 1 in 33 men being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is encouraging men to use the language of rape to establish dominance over one another (”I’ll make you my bitch”). Rape culture is making rape a ubiquitous part of male-exclusive bonding. Rape culture is ignoring the cavernous need for men’s prison reform in part because the threat of being raped in prison is considered an acceptable deterrent to committing crime, and the threat only works if actual men are actually being raped.
Rape culture is 1…
Who’s Afraid of a Beautiful Woman?
Via the First Church of Mutterhals:
There’s some exhibit at a museum in Pittsburgh featuring never before seen photos of Marilyn Monroe. Now, I’m not some retrograde star fucker who pines for the golden age of Hollywood when all the men were either latent homosexuals or confirmed rapists and all the women were hopped up on pills. But seeing Monroe’s ethereally beautiful mug plastered all over this city quickly became one of a few bright spots on my otherwise dreary morning commute.
To my horror, this morning I saw that someone defaced one of the billboards touting the exhibit. Under the copy, in awkward, sloppy lettering, stood the hastily spray painted profundity ‘women are not objects’ followed by some bastard amalgam of an anarchy sign and the symbol for female. I guess the self defense class let out early last night and someone was feeling frisky.
I’d like to address the trog that…
