December 2006 – Page 9

He-Man Woman-Haters Club Goes to Church

tom
Even Tom Cruise is confused as to how his character in Magnolia materialized into a real-life Evangelical preacher.

Thank the Lord for testosterone. Without it, these guys would have absolutely no way to justify behaving like childish, sexist, sef-indulgent jerks.

The strobe lights pulse and the air vibrates to a killer rock beat. Giant screens show mayhem and gross-out pranks: a car wreck, a sucker punch, a flabby (and naked) rear end, sealed with duct tape.

Brad Stine runs onstage in ripped blue jeans, his shirt untucked, his long hair shaggy. He’s a stand-up comic by trade, but he’s here today as an evangelist, on a mission to build up a new Christian man — one profanity at a time. “It’s the wuss-ification of America that’s getting us!” screeches Stine, 46.

A moment later he adds a fervent: “Thank you, Lord, for our testosterone!”

At least he didn’t say “puss-ification,” right?

Your Uterus is Our Uterus

Or so says Concerned Women for America’s Janice Shaw Crouse of Mary Cheney.

Mary Cheney’s pregnancy poses problems not just for her child, but also for all Americans. Her action repudiates traditional values and sets an appalling example for young people at a time when father absence is the most pressing social problem facing the nation. With 37 percent of American children born to fatherless families, Mary Cheney is contributing to a trend that is detrimental to all Americans who will live with the ramifications of millions of children whose anger and frustration at not knowing their father will be felt in the public schools and communities of our nation.

Yes, I’m sure Mary Cheney’s child will be at a significant disadvantage, being born into a wealthy and prestigous two-parent family.

Mary Cheney is among that burgeoning group of adult women over age 20 that are driving the trend of women who don’t want a man in the picture, but want to have a baby. These older women are pushing out-of-wedlock birth statistics higher and higher. At a time when teen births and teen abortions are declining dramatically, older women are having more un-wed births and more abortions, including repeat abortions (indicating that they are using abortion as birth control).

I think it speaks volumes that Janice believes females over the age of 20 are “older women.”

Memorial for Eric Ng

eric

Kate sends on the following information about Eric’s memorial — please spread the word:

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9

1PM: Memorial bike ride. Meet up in Washington Square Park at 1pm. We will ride together to the site of Eric’s death at 1:30 SHARP. Non-bikers can go directly to the West Side Greenway, near Clarkson St. By train: take the 1 to Houston St.

2:30PM: Memorial service at St. Mark’s Church. Friends & family will share stories, show photos, and play music. St. Mark’s Church is at the corner of 2nd Ave and 11th St. By train: 6 to Astor Place, R/W to 8th St, or F train to Houston St.

8PM: Memorial dance party. Do not go gently into that good night. DJs and live punk rock. At Time’s Up, 49 E. Houston St. By train: 6 or B/D/F/V to Bleecker-Lafayette.

I only met Eric briefly in college, and never knew him well. But by all accounts he was an incredible individual, and he will be missed.

The Elusive Female Sense of Humor, an interpretive dance by a drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay

Shorter Christopher “Laff-a-Minute” Hitchens: Women aren’t funny because they don’t laugh at my jokes. The only ones who are funny are fat Jewish dykes, and since I can’t pretend they want my sodden ass, I can dismiss them as not women. So, women, definitively, aren’t funny.

Almost filed under “crimes,” because I have to wonder what Hitchens has on Graydon Carter if Vanity Fair is publishing this ill-supported swill.

Someone Likes Us

Skippy informs us that Feministe is a finalist in the 2006 Weblog Awards, in the Best of the Top 250 Blogs category. Where one of our competitors is Stop the ACLU. Of all things.

Other notable finalists: Skippy (Best Liberal Blog), Majikthise (Best Individual Blog), Orcinus (Best of the Top 250) Pandagon (Best Liberal Blog), Shakespeare’s Sister (Best Liberal Blog), Jon Swift (Best Humor Blog), BlogHer (Best Online Community), Jesus’ General (Best Liberal Blog), Bitch, Ph.D. (Best Liberal Blog), Bring it On! (Best Liberal Blog), The Rude Pundit (Best Liberal Blog), Pam’s House Blend (Best LGBT Blog), Republic of T. (Best LGBT Blog), Michael Berube (Best Educational Blog), Pharyngula (Best Science Blog), Good Math, Bad Math (Best Science Blog), Tom Watson (Best Culture Blog), Property of a Lady (Best of the Rest of the Blogs).

Congratulations to all! If you see any blog you frequent on the list that I haven’t named above, feel free to speak up in comments.

Thanks to whoever nominated us. It’s quite an honor. And a surprise, to find out we’re in the top 250. Really?

Voting will be open Thursday at the Weblog Awards blog. We canNOT lose to Stop the ACLU, so go vote your hearts out. You’ll have a tough time in the Best Liberal Blog category, that’s for sure.

Good Lord, this is eerily accurate

Your Birthdate: September 23

You’re not good at any one thing, and that’s the problem.
You’re good at so much – you never know what to do.
Change is in your blood, and you don’t stick to much for long.
You are destined for a life of travel and fun.

Your strength: Your likeability

Your weakness: You never feel satisfied

Your power color: Bright yellow

Your power symbol: Asterisk

Your power month: May

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

Via Denise at Life, Law, Gender. Who just took her last law school class today! Congrats, Denise!

Now you’ll spend the next 10 years trying to explain to potential employers why you graduated in December. Ah, UM.

Why So Snippy

This is some of the thought process behind the carnival. I just totally yelled at Shannon, and I feel like I should clarify. I’ve struggled with this topic for a long time. I don’t want to derail, and I don’t want to come off as insensitive to the larger issues that everyone’s trying to talk about, and I don’t want to sound as though I don’t believe that sexism is important or pervasive. I recently came across a pretty obvious example, albeit one that illustrates the conflict over speaking up at all:

28th Carnival of the Feminists is up

Ginger at Diary of a Freak Magnet plays host this time. Lots of good stuff there, including La Lubu’s guest post here, Like a Natural Woman.

Go check it out!

Marginalized College Republicans Speak Out

Pity the poor NYU Republicans. They really are an oppressed bunch:

“It doesn’t bother me that I’m … one of the only conservatives in a liberal environment — I’m OK with that — what bothers me is when I’m not allowed to express my views, or worse, penalized for them,” Laska said. He added that while he was never personally penalized, many College Republicans have been singled out.

I’m totally not allowed to express my views. Which is why I’m on Fox News talking about them with absolutely no retribution, unless you count a law student mocking me on her blog. (And cry me a river about how your meanie professor told you that Fox isn’t a valid news source. Next thing you know, they’ll be telling you that browsing Instapundit isn’t adequate research for your thesis. Oh, the liberal bias!)

I’ve been at NYU for 5 1/2 years now, as an undergraduate and as a grad student, and I have never seen or heard professors target conservative students in class, or penalize them in any way for their political views — and I was a politics major, so if these issues would come up anywhere, you’d think it would be in that department. I have, however, personally interviewed an NYU athletics coach who was highly critical of Title IX and an NYU sociology professor who has argued for “men’s rights” in abortion (my interview with him, to be clear, was not on that specific issue). This university has been home to professors who argue for welfare “reform,” defenders of colonialism, and founders of neoconservatism.

And on Monday one of my professors made fun of the ACLU. Can I go on CNN now?

Oh, Crap.

While looking around to see if any of the local news outlets had anything on the giant clouds of black smoke* rising up from near Grand Central (I could see where they’re coming from from my boss’s office — but my boss is in his office, and he’s so tetchy about people going in there), I ran across a headline about the New York City Board of Health’s approval of a ban on trans fats in NYC restaurants.**

Knowing that the Board of Health was also set to make a decision today about off-leash rules in city parks, I decided to see if the article mentioned that. And it did — the board unanimously approved off-leash hours. But then I noticed they rejected another proposed rule change:

Another measure that would have allowed transgender people to amend their birth certificates without having undergone surgery was voted down.

The board unanimously backed up the current policy that requires proof of sex reassignment surgery.

Transgender advocates say tens of thousands of New Yorkers face severe and pervasive discrimination as a result of their inability to obtain identification matching the gender in which they live.

They say simple things like entering buildings can be difficult because their ID’s don’t match their looks, and that many cannot afford the expensive surgical procedures needed. Advocates are vowing to continue their fight to change the policy.

It’s not clear from any of the articles I’ve seen what exactly was going on, but if the process was anything like what was going on with the dog rules, the board likely held a public hearing and had a period of public comment. I would imagine that the image of the transsexual in the public mind is of someone who’s been surgically altered. In any event, no bold step forward at this time.

_______
* A car fire, apparently. The sirens have stopped, at least.

** I’ll try to give this one a good going-over when more details come out.