In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Category: Gender

“Stay tight, wear white”

–advice from a father to his 13-year-old daughter. Is it just me, or is that a completely disgusting thing to be saying?

Feministing scours this one quite nicely, pointing out the huge double-standards in how parents talk about sex with their kids and how it perpetuates young people internalizing this kind of sexism. It’s worth a read, even if a lot of the comments will make you cringe. Not-so-surprising point: In every category of sexual experience, the kids have done quite a bit more than their parents thought they had. For example, only 1 parent thought their kid had given oral sex, while 51 actually had (on the other hand, 10 parents thought their kid had received oral sex; perhaps they believe their children to be selfish?).

And if that’s not gross enough for you, allow Twisty’s latest to stir up some righteous rage about our neighbor to the north: In Canada, you can now get away with rape if you claim you had “sexsomnia.” That’s right, if you rape a woman and claim that you were sleeping while doing it, you’re a-ok — you didn’t know what you were doing, even if you did have the sleep-raping foresight to put on a condom.

The Daughter Track

I’m not a fan of trend stories, but this one is interesting, even if it doesn’t actually reflect any major change: Women are leaving their careers to care for their elderly parents.

In another era, the task of caring for elderly parents often fell to the unmarried daughter who never left home and never worked for a living. But now, in a 21st-century twist on the 19th-century spinster, career women like Ms. Geist who have made their mark in the world are returning home to care for parents in old age.

They are embracing a filial role that few could have imagined in their futures and are doing so by choice. In fact, sociologists are beginning to give the phenomenon a name: the Daughter Track, a late-in-life version of the Mommy Track, a career downsizing popular with younger women.

Women, now as always, bear a disproportionate burden for elder care and often leave jobs, either temporarily or permanently, when the double duty becomes overwhelming , according to recent studies of family care-giving, women in the workplace and retirement patterns. Although there is no precise count of how many women have walked away from careers to care for their parents, more of them than ever are financially independent, unmarried or childless, which makes it more feasible than it might be for women with families at home. And never have more parents needed adult children to care for them, what with long life expectancy and disabling conditions like Alzheimer’s disease.

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Equal-Opportunity Crappy Dating Advice

It seems like every feminist blogger has written, at some point, about the crappy dating advice that comes by way of Cosmo and Glamour and whatever other “women’s” publication helps us out by claiming that you too can attract every man you want if you just follow these 10 simple steps. There are a million reasons to be irritated by such advice — it assumes men all think the same way, it assumes all women are only interested in men, it assumes men can basically be tricked into liking a woman if she tosses her head the right way, and it generally encourages women to behave deferentially and to lie about how they really feel. Not good. But via Wonkette, now those “nice guys” who get NewsMax in their email boxes get to deal with the same shit we do. Only with way more unnecessary capitalization, and over-use of the phrase, “Don’t be a WUSSIE!”. Full text after the jump.

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Feminism Killed Natalee Holloway

Is there anything these people can’t blame feminism for?

Because of politically-correct feminist imperatives, girls now know more about sex but less about the opposite sex. There was a time when girls were told that boys were vastly different from them, possessing stronger libidos and bodies. Girls were taught to avoid placing themselves in compromising situations; they were armed with the facts upon which good judgement rested and safety depended.

Now, though, such counsel is sacrilege. Girls’ minds are filled with notions of the sameness of the sexes, with its corollary that they can go where their sisters of yore feared to tread. Why, God forbid that we should tell them that, like it or not, they are the more vulnerable sex, and that this fact of life should inform their thinking.

Not that I’m laboring under the illusion that modern girls are all sugar and spice and everything nice. Owing to feminism, which liberated the fairer sex from common-sense, morality, restraint, and chastity, quasi-harlotry now infects much of contemporary womanhood. A lady close to my heart said it best: “Forty years ago you knew who the bad girls were; now you know who the good girls are.” And now we have a whole generation of girls-gone-wild.

Because knowing about sex and believing that you have the right to go out alone is what’ll rape and/or kill you. Not, you know, actual rapists and murderers.

But equal with feminism is bad parenting — you know, the people who would let their daughters (and it’s just daughers) go on “hedonistic” vacations to Spanish-speaking countries.

Let’s be blunt, one way a daughter could frame this is, “Hey, Mom and Dad, can I go to Cancun for spring break (or to celebrate, or some other occasion)?” But translated that often means, “Hey, Mom and Dad, can I go to Cancun, where I’ll most likely have sex with some libidinous boy you don’t know from Adam – maybe even with lots of boys – drink, smoke, and perhaps even do drugs?” That sounds crazy but is, in essence, accurate. Crazier still is that the parents’ answer is often “yes.”

Now, I’m not a big fan of the entitlement issues that come along with kids who think they “deserve” an exotic vacation for high school graduation or for simply existing. But that aside, at some point parents have to evaluate whether or not they trust their kids, and they have to let their children grow up and make their own decisions. Were I a parent, would I let my 15-year-old go to Aruba alone? Probably not. But do I hope that I’ll know my 18-year-old well enough to be able to reasonably evaluate whether or not they’ll go on a sex-and-drugs spree in a foreign country.

The “girls gone wild” culture is, as far as I can tell, a non-existant part of the majority of young women’s personal experiences, and to be honest I’m sick of every female in my generation being associated with it. Young women are not all running amok flashing our breasts for beads and enticing innocent high school boys into having sex with us. Those of us who do engage in certain behaviors that this author would criticize — sexual performance to please a male audience, etc — do so as a response to a lot of complicated social factors, and it’s over-simplistic to just call those women heathen sluts and assume that their experiences are universal for young women. Hell, I went to Mexico for spring break last year with six other people, and it wasn’t exactly an exercise in unrestrained hedonism — we were in bed by midnight every night, and woke up by 9am (we did drink Pacifico and pina coladas in the pool all day, but that’s about as wild as it got). I’m sure there were plenty of people there who were a lot crazier than we were, and that’s fine — but just because their experience is more visible doesn’t make it more common.

Of course, what no one seems to be pointing out is that, even if we assume that “girls gone wild” are everywhere, it’s men who are videotaping them, encouraging them to behave a certain way, rewarding sexualized and male-pleasing behavior, and making money off of them. Feminism has never said, “You go, girls! Get naked for that guy and let him make millions off your ass!” We just see the dishonesty in slut-shaming and pinning all the blame on women.

Broads Who Blog

SadieMAG has an article about that female blogger thing, which includes a nice little Feministe shout-out, as well as links to some of my favorite blogs (Shakespeare’s Sister, Rox Populi, Suburban Guerrilla, Pandagon, Bitch PhD, Majikthise, Culture Cat, Wonkette). The article is interesting, although I take issue with parts of it. Right-wing blogger Kathy is quoted as saying, apparently about Wonkette, “Any woman blogger on the web can use her sexuality to gain readers. But is that what we want?” I’m not sure if Kathy actually reads Wonkette, but (a) much of the blogging there is done by people other than Ana Marie Cox, and (b) while Wonkette makes sex jokes, it’s usually something crude about ass-fucking, and not at all referencing her own life. She definitely doesn’t do the “I’m hot, read me!” Washingtonienne-style blogging (sidenote: Check out this month’s NY Mag for a strange bit on Jessica Cutler).

That said, I do agree with Lindsay Beyerstein:

Yet mainstream media pundits and academics regularly invite the dirty-writing Wonkette to comment on issues of blogging or blogging ethics. She “was invited to represent not only women but the liberal blogs. That [annoyed] the hell out of everyone,” Beyerstein says.

Wonkette is a DC celebrity/entertainment/political blog, the way Gawker is for NYC. Wonkette is a female who blogs, but doesn’t represent female bloggers as a whole — that’s just not what she’s about (and as far as I can tell, it’s other people who seem eager to paste the Woman Blogger sticker onto her; she doesn’t seem to feed into it herself, beyond her possession of a vagina).

Right Wing Sparkle blogger Kathy pretty much got on my last nerve throughout the entirety of the article, as she fed into every possible stereotype about women bloggers:

“Females certainly have a different voice than men when blogging,” says Kathy. “I think that’s why a lot of the big male bloggers ignore us. Women view politics through the same prism that they view life–one that is colored by emotion.”

And

“I think it’s fairly easy to tell if it is a man or woman blogger. We are different, after all, even in the way we write.”

…right.

On the contrary, I’d be willing to bet that once a blogger identifies herself as female, what she writes is perceived differently — if what would be considered righteous anger in a man is “shrill” when it comes from a woman; arguing pointedly is acceptable when the arguer is male, bitchy when they’re female. I don’t blame bloggers who hide their gender, or who ghost as men. It makes sense.

And like Amanda says in the article, blogging rules — like the rules in politics in general, and in the mainstream media — were made by the boys. A blog that focuses on feminism and reproductive rights is “soft” and silly and too narrow, while one that focuses entirely on the Iraq war is perfectly valid and serious. But I ultimately agree with what she adds here:

…as people become more aware that there’s no enforcement of the rules, there’s less inclination to treat the top bloggers as the ultimate authorities on who counts and who doesn’t. Also, as it is becoming more clear that the very blurring of the personal and political, as well as the political with other interests–the very things that were supposedly “feminine” blogging behaviors and therefore somehow unappealing–are in fact exactly the things that bring people back to their favorite blogs.

Anyway, read the whole article. The quotes from Amanda, Lindsay and Clancy, among others, are really great.

UPDATE: Deanna at Alternet makes the point that the term “woman bloggers” really sucks. Right on.

The Chick Flick

A must-read LA Times article about how the “chick flick” title ghettoizes and marginalizes women’s experiences. Any movie that shows women’s experiences, or that caters to a female audience, is immediately labelled a “chick flick,” implying that it’s less serious, less important, and unappealing to male audiences.

And it’s a blanket category at that, the smothering kind. It has made it so that a movie like “Wedding Crashers” is simply considered a comedy, whereas movies like “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion” (a satire with female characters) or “The Sweetest Thing” (a raunchy comedy) are considered chick flicks — even when they share more in common with contemporary mainstream comedies than with the “women’s pictures” of the 1930s and ’40s from which, Athena-like, they are supposed to have sprung.

Like many reclaimed pejoratives, “chick flick” remains a volatile term. You can tell by the way some handle it gingerly and others lob it like a grenade. For example, in July 2004, O magazine published an article ranking the “50 Greatest Chick Flicks of All Time,” which included Stephen Daldry’s “The Hours” at No. 11. That point was echoed in an interview on Canadian television in which Daldry said of his movie, “I don’t think this is a chick flick at all. I think there are real serious issues about how we live our lives and change our lives that are relevant to everybody.”

…because a “chick flick” doesn’t deal with serious issues, and can’t be relevant to everybody.

In other words, by lumping all movies about women into the same category, quality female-centric movies are put in the awkward position of having to assert their quality by denying the female-centric label. So much for reclaiming.

And the chick flick label has very real effects for female directors who seek to make movies that represent their own experiences.

But where male directors may wave it away with a grumble and move on to something else, the threat may be more serious to female directors trying to bring women’s experiences to the screen. In a recent interview in Slate magazine, writer Pamela Paul posed this question to director Niki Caro, whose movie “North Country” tells the story of the first class-action sexual harassment suit: “Both ‘Whale Rider’ and ‘North Country’ are stories about female empowerment. Do you worry about being marginalized as a woman director of films for women?”

“Yeah, I do,” Caro replies, “because that’s not what I do. I don’t see myself as a crusading feminist filmmaker. Not at all…. Personally, I have nothing to prove. But I’m tremendously curious about human nature. Female life is so incredibly under-explored in cinema, so these stories feel very exotic.”

Forget, for the moment, the weird characterization of Caro’s movies as being about female empowerment. (Are “Free Willy” and “The Insider” stories about male empowerment, or are they just stories about a boy and his large sea mammal, and of a lone crusader and his big, bad corporation, respectively?) Think instead about the philosophical gymnastics required to present oneself as a cool enough chick to be OK with being called a chick, but not with one’s movie being called a “chick flick,” because that would imply it’s silly, or histrionic, or a turnoff. Caro’s carefully worded response is incredibly freighted with the difficulties of trying to make art from human experience when the experience in question is female.

Read the whole thing, and try and ignore the post-post-feminism bits.

Newsflash: Fox News Biased

Only this time it’s not in their coverage, it’s in the workplace.

The commission claims that a Fox vice president, Joe Chillemi, “routinely used gross obscenities and vulgarities when describing women or their body parts,” language that it says Mr. Chillemi “did not use with male employees.” The suit contends that Mr. Chillemi “routinely cursed at and otherwise denigrated women employees,” telling them to “be a man.”

The suit charges that Mr. Chillemi, in a discussion about a television segment focusing on sexism in the workplace, said, “Of course I’d pick the man” if he had to choose between a woman and a man for the same position, because he was concerned that a woman could become pregnant and leave her job. Mr. Chillemi is described in the suit as the supervisor of the Fox Advertising and Promotions Department.

Shocking, just shocking. via Gawker.

Women in Law

Ruth Bader Ginsburg reminds all of us how far women in the law have come. It’s good to take a look back and see how much things have improved in just a few decades; it also serves as inspiration to keep pushing forward, and to refuse to accept the status quo as “good enough.”

Ginsburg chose to give her audience a history lesson, recalling the struggles that women have endured to practice law and work as judges in the United States.

Men, she said, often argued against allowing women into law schools or state bar associations, for such nonsensical reasons as they didn’t have a bathroom for them.

Ginsburg noted, however, that women’s role in law can be traced back to ancient times when the Greeks worshipped a goddess of justice named Athena and the Book of Judges in the Bible tells of Deborah, a prophet, judge and military leader.

Yet, the first woman was not admitted into a U.S. law school until 1869. And after graduation, women found states unwilling to admit women to the bar. Even when this battle was won, the number of women going into law remained small.

Ginsburg noted the president of Harvard Law School answered a question on declining enrollment during World War II by saying, “Not as bad as we thought, we still have 75 students and we haven’t had to admit any women.”

In the 1960s, 3 percent of law students were women. My class at NYU is 45 percent, and overall women’s enrollment numbers in all schools average at or above 50 percent. Women are 23 percent of tenured law professors, and 35 percent of teaching staff. Nine women head state bar associations.

These numbers are good, and the represent huge improvements. I don’t want to rain on the parade, but it’s worth pointing out that while women are now studying law in equal numbers to men, they haven’t yet broken into the profession in nearly the same numbers — nine female heads of state bar associations is pretty good, but last time I checked there were 50 states. Likewise, 23 percent of tenured law professors is good, but when you consider that women are 50 percent of the population it doesn’t look quite so sunny. Of course, this is in large part a product of the fact that 30 years ago, women weren’t attending law schools in large numbers, and so obviously there’s a smaller pool of established female lawyers and legal academics to draw from. I’m crossing my fingers that 10 years from now, we’ll be caught up.

Via How Appealing. Thanks to Dad for the link.

Electing Women in Africa

An interesting article in the Times about women voting and running for office in Liberia.

Women were victims and commodities in the long civil war – some combatants were effectively paid by being given the right to rape, to brutalize women and girls in captured towns and villages. But as the nation emerges from war and joins the growing family of African democracies, women have emerged as a key voting bloc in what may be this nation’s first truly free and fair elections.

Women’s groups were also a major force in forging the peace accord that led to the departure of Charles Taylor, the warlord who became Liberia’s president in 1997 and presided over the civil war that had begun in 1989 and wreaked havoc throughout the region. The head of the election commission, Frances Johnson-Morris, is a former Supreme Court justice, and three other commission members are women.

As democracy takes hold on the continent, African women have taken to the ballot, often registering to vote in numbers equal to men and heading to the polls despite social and economic tasks – child care, housekeeping and poorly paying work in the informal economy – that could keep them from the voting booth.

Of course, these social and economic tasks tend to be the same things that keep women from running for office in the first place.

The barriers can be high. One woman, a would-be candidate, tried to mount a campaign for the House of Representatives for the All Liberian Coalition Party and came to Mr. Diawara for advice, he said. She could not afford the $750 fee and asked the party president for help. The party chairman offered her $500, and said she should find the rest. But with little financial support, she had little choice but to abandon the race. A man took her place.

In many African countries, legal land ownership for women is a relatively new right — in others, women don’t have property rights, and therefore have a much harder time making money than men do. Couple that with all the social issues surrounding women’s rights, and we can see how difficult it is for women in many countries to run for office. The women who manage to break the mold have to work twice as hard and be twice as good to get where they are. They’re inspirational.

This is one election I’ll be following.