This came up in comments. How come a “women’s magazine” (“woman’s magazine”?) means Vogue or Cosmo or Good Housekeeping or Glamour or Marie Clair, but does not mean Ms. or Bitch or On Our Backs?
Archive for Feminism
Sex is sacred. Therefore, have some.
Why is sex the only sacred thing that conservatives want you to do less?
Per Amanda, I learn that whacko nutjob freakazoid Dawn Eden wants sex to stay “a great mystery” (read: “about which you are uneducated”). Of course, she also doesn’t want you to have “casual” sex, or sex outside marriage, or sex with contraception, or sex in certain positions, or using certain parts, and certainly not using the same parts for both partners, and definitely not having more than one partner, and no the frick way having less than one partner, and not with devices and not during your period and probably if you’re a woman you also shouldn’t come.
So here’s the thing. We’re told that prayer is sacred, and so Christians pray often, every chance they get, in many different contexts. We’re told going to church is sacred, so Christians go often. Catholics especially just pop on by the big pretty building to light an extra candle. We’re told that giving charity is sacred, and so religious people of all stripes should give more, and more often. We’re told sex is sacred, and so we should…not have sex?
As they say on Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the other. » Read more..
Not acceptable
My sister just wrote the most amazing blog about being a fat woman that maybe I’ve ever read.
Mandisa, American Idol contestant, a big beautiful woman (genuinely big, genuinely beautiful) was told by Paula Abdul that she has a beautiful face. Let’s finish that sentence… ‘despite how fat you are’ or, the perennial favorite, ‘if only you would lose weight’. And Mandisa did not know enough, I assert, to find that comment insulting. Katharine McPhee is told every week how beautiful she looks. Not her face, but her.
Read the whole thing.
Update: Link corrected.
You Are My Everything
I was reading this interesting post by Jill of Feministe. She’s talking about the situation that many feminist women find ourselves in, of being in relationships with men who aren’t feminists, or who think they are feminists, but have some seriously sexist blind spots.
[I]n just about every relationship I’ve been in, there have been at least a few feminist falling-outs. They weren’t usually deal-breakers, but they shaped my view of the person that I was with, and they generally just made me feel bad – like there was another reminder that I wasn’t entirely safe, even within my own relationship, and that this person who I cared about and maybe even loved could never really see me or get it.
The thing this got me thinking about was not feminism per se, but relationships, and the huge demands we place on them. » Read more..
Thank the Goddess
I am very, very glad that the FDA advisory panel has approved the HPV vaccine. But I must say, it is bittersweet to be happy about something that truly should have been a given.
Monday Movie Review: About Schmidt
About Schmidt (2002) 6/10
Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) has just retired, and his wife has just died. Empty and sad, he journeys to his daughter’s (Hope Davis) wedding.
An entire thesis could be, and perhaps has been, written about the role in this film of Kathy Bates’s naked ass. By the time Schmidt arrives in Denver to meet the parents of his future son-in-law Randall (Dermot Mulroney), we are relieved by their warmth. Roberta (Bates) has a home painted in deep rusts and golds, decorated with art and musical instruments, and she dresses in a flowing purple caftan. After an hour of Schmidt’s sorrowful, repressed, seething grays and tans and blues, arriving in Denver is like finding a warm fire after trudging through the snow. » Read more..
Duke Car Theft Revisited
Over on Pandagon, they’re discussing the way that “innocent until proven guilty” gets used in rape cases as a gloss for “blame the victim.” This is ground we’ve covered before.
Amanda says:
The other thing I’ve learned from rape apologists lately is that while in most crimes, the presumption of innocence is a legal standard for determining if a defendent is guilty or not, but when it comes to rape, that’s not good enough. Rape and rape alone is a crime where it’s critical that we heap disdain on the victim and refuse to believe her until it’s proven in court, which should be easy to do after everyone has satiated him/herself on accusing the victim of lying.
And as I’ve said before, if you told someone your car was stolen, whether that someone is a cop or a prosecutor or a friend, the reaction would not be, “Well, were you driving in a dangerous neighborhood? Were you drinking? Did you leave it unlocked?” followed by disbelief that the car was actually stolen. That just wouldn’t be the reaction. “Asking for it” doesn’t come into the conversation about other crimes, about theft or physical assault or what have you.
A smart commentator on this post says, in regard to the presumption of innocence:
Filing a false police report and lying under oath are crimes. Young, O’Reilly, and their ilk always accuse rape victims of those crimes. Don’t rape victims have a presumption of innocence?
Of course, in our world, rape victims don’t have a presumption of innocence, either socially or in the eyes of the law. But we need to change that, and we can’t be stopped from changing that by the fact that sometimes, in rare cases, some victims (of various crimes, not just rape) are lying. Believing the victim is the decent thing to do.
The Duke Car Theft Case
Of all the reams of material I’ve read about the Duke rape case, the raw news, the feminist, race, and class analysis, the anti-feminist rhetoric, the information on DNA testing, the meta-news about how the news is reporting the story, of all of it, the thing that resonates most clearly for me is the car theft analogy.
-
Sometimes people who report their cars stolen are lying, for their own reasons, be it fraud, malice, attention-seeking, or whatever.
-
Sometimes, a person consents to loan his car, and then accuses the borrower of theft. Such a case is ‘one person’s word against the other.’
-
Physical evidence of damage to the car isn’t proof of theft. It might merely prove vandalism. If I break your car window, and then someone else comes along and jacks the stereo, I am not a thief, am I? I’m just a vandal! Nonetheless, such evidence is considered significant.
-
Although there are numerous authorities advising you on how to avoid getting your car stolen, your lapses in following that advise aren’t all that pertinent to the theft investigation. If you left a package visible in the car, or if you parked on a dark side-street, your right to file a theft report would not be questioned.
-
Some car thiefs are joy-riding youngsters, often alcohol-fueld, and with no criminal background. This doesn’t prevent the theft from being treated as a crime, nor does it shift blame onto the victim.
This is a drum we need to bang until it’s deafening
Via several sources, but here’s the Bitch.
Some pharmacies are now refusing to fill prescriptions for post-abortion vitamins and antibiotics.
Because “pro-life” means “pro-bacterial infection”?
Nah, because pro-life means pro-fetus and anti-woman. Because pro-life is code for “if you have sex, bitch, we’ll punish you. With forced pregnancy, with HPV, and with infection. You deserve it, slut.”
That’s what it means. Nothing else. If they have any story about pro-life they would be furiously against this. And we need to bang this drum. Loudly. Everywhere. This needs to be the poster child of pro-choice, pro-woman sanity. Because these people are insane and if the HPV vaccine battle hasn’t proven it (which of course it has) this is the nail in the coffin of their frickin crazy-ass movement.
Girly Girls
In a post that is not about girliness, Shakespeare’s Sister describes why she isn’t girly:
I have a filthy mouth, a dirty sense of humor, an aesthetic lack of girliness (as in no make-up, no skirts, and perpetually untidy hair), and a collection of attributes which men and women alike deem “boyish???—namely, a fondness for Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, video game junkitude, the ability to correctly distinguish between DC and Marvel superheroes, and a pathological aversion to shopping.
I thought that was interesting. I have some of her “boy” characteristics, and some of her “girl” characteristics.
When I was younger, I thought I wasn’t girly because I’m loud, awkward, and socially agressive. I liked hanging out with the guys. I thought makeup was boring (I do wear makeup sometimes, not daily, but I find talking about makeup excruciating). Feminists talked about how men dominated conversations and silenced women in mixed groups, and I thought, uh oh, I guess I’m not very female, because that never happens to me. I prefered boisterous man-talk to retiring to the kitchen with the ladies and the babies. I forget to look in the mirror so if my lipstick goes haywire or my hair stands straight up, hours could pass before I notice. I sit large and have never managed any sort of ladylike posture. And yes, I like science fiction and Star Trek and men just cannot believe they are meeting a woman who loves James Bond.
But then some people in my life started telling me I was very girly. Very. I couldn’t understand that at first. Ultimately I could come up with a list of girl characteristics: I love to shop. I love pretty colors and pretty things and I like to wear pink. I like fairies and flowers (my tattoos are ultra-fem). My flirtation style is coy and girly. I blush. I like girl-chores better than boy-chores, and would much rather clean the kitchen than take out the garbage. I am confused by hardware and I think cars and electronics are extremely dull (Unless James Bond is operating them). Duller even than makeup.
Then, last summer, talking with some female friends, I discovered we all had, at some points, doubts about whether we were “real girls.”
I am gradually getting it through my head that I am girly because I am a girl. Womanly because I am a woman. Feminine because I am female. There doesn’t need to be any other test.
So ‘fess up. In what ways are you, and are you not, typical of your gender? What characteristics caused you to doubt yourself? What affirmed you? What’s your list?
