March 2007 – Page 10

Dammit.

So I hunted high and low for a pair of shoes that were work-appropriate, not unduly expensive, yet comfortable and supportive for my problem feet.

And I found them, finally.

Unfortunately, they fart when I walk.

Call for Suggestions

Tigtog’s put up a link for an open suggestions thread at Finally, a Feminist 101 Blog.

Got a troll asking you disingenuous or stupid questions and don’t know where to tell them to go (other than hell, of course)? Drop on by the open suggestion thread and make a suggestion for a post to which you can later refer trolls (or the genuinely clueless). With a sweet smile and a suggestion to come back once they’ve covered the first-year course material.

Or, a suggestion to cram it. Your choice.

BSG Discussion Thread — 3.18 “The Son Also Rises”

Looks like Lee isn’t the only Adama with Daddy issues.

Discuss.

The Ethics of Genetic Testing

Michael Bérubé, full-time Professor of Dangeral Studies and weekend blogger at Pandagon, has both a post and an article (in the Toronto Globe & Mail) about prenatal testing and some of the ethical issues it raises, in particular where the results are a factor in deciding whether to abort a fetus.

As you may know, Michael is the father of a son, Jamie, who has Down syndrome. He’s written quite extensively about Jamie, both at his now-giant nuclear fireballed blog and in a 1996 book. When Michael’s wife Janet was pregnant with Jamie in 1991 at the age of 36, the doctor suggested amniocentesis “just to make sure.” They decided against the procedure for a variety of reasons, among them that the risk of miscarriage was about the same as the risk of Down syndrome. Another was that the results would not be available until 16 to 18 weeks into the pregnancy, later than they were comfortable with for making a decision about termination, though any severe, life-threatening anomaly such as anencephaly, would be visible on the sonogram much sooner.

Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday

You know the drill: toot yer horns.

UPDATE: Okay, you don’t know the drill. Promote specific posts, with descriptions, so people know why they should visit your blog.

Y’all really gotta brush up on your self-promotion skills. Oy!

Finally!

A Feminism 101 blog! Called, appropriately enough, Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog.

It’s there for your basic questions about feminism, because we’re not here to school you in the basics.

Muchas gracias to tigtog, the Hoyden About Town, for putting this together.

Missing the Point

So, I bought the dead-tree version of the NY Times today and came across this column by Judith Warner. Unfortunately, I left the paper on the bus, so I don’t have it in front of me, and I don’t have Times Select, so you’ll just have to trust me when I relay the basic point.

Warner starts the column with a little domestic scene, with she and her younger daughter watching Maid in Manhattan. This leads into musing about how someone like the senator played by Ralph Fiennes is statistically unlikely to marry someone like Jennifer Lopez’s maid, but though it was ever thus (hence the fairy tale fantasy), it’s now the case for the first time that the social strata are based less on birth than on accomplishment for both parties.

Which, of course, makes a lot of sense: quite a number of couples in my class at law school met there, and when you’re spending overnights at the office, the appeal of your coworkers is obvious. You do see a lot of (usually male) associate and (usually female) paralegal dating at a big firm, moreso than, say, associates and secretaries. Partly because of the gulf in education and ambition, but also, I’d say, because the secretaries get to go home at 5:30. You date who you spend time around, and people who have high-powered careers tend to hang out at the same places, whether work or bars.

But here’s where I think there was a big flaw in the column: Warner raises concerns, expressed by several people she quotes in the column, that this kind of concentration of highly-educated people is going to create some kind of brain-power gap as the more-educated breed smarter children and, presumably, the less-educated breed dumber ones.

Huh?

I think we’ve clearly seen over and over again that a degree from a top school does not necessarily mean that one is the very best and brightest. The idea that only the very cream of the nation’s brains go to Harvard ignores that a large percentage of Harvard students are there because they’re legacies, not because they’re the smartest. It also ignores the fact that there are a HELL of a lot of very smart kids who don’t have the opportunity to go to Harvard, because they were stuck in underfunded and underperforming schools; or because they lacked the kind of support system that would get them to college at all, let alone Harvard; or because they’re girls, and their parents don’t believe in educating girls; or even just because college tuition is out of control.

The assumption that education equals intelligence and that the Harvard grads are going to be breeding a race of superchildren is, quite frankly, toxic. While undoubtedly you do have to be smart to succeed in college, it’s not the only measure of intelligence, and given legacy admissions, it’s more a reflection of the lack of real class mobility in this country than it is an indicator of who’s the best and the brightest. Particularly since the “best and the brightest” always seem to be white and middle-to-upper class.

Friday Random Ten

The “Day late because I’m sick as a dog” edition.

1. Tom Yorke – Harrowdown Hill
2. Black Star – Brown Sugar
3. Bob Dylan – I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
4. Chad VanGaalen – Flower Gardens
5. Franz Ferdinand – Auf Auchse
6. Refused – Summerholidays vs. Punkroutine
7. Jill Scott – Be Ready
8. Yo La Tengo – Moby Octopad
9. Ray LaMontagne – Narrow Escape
10. Neon Golden – The Notwist

And because I am actually very very sick, I will probably not be checking the blog very often, since the effort it takes to walk from my bed to the kitchen is just too much for me to do repeatedly. I am, however, happy to read any home remedies for feeling like your lungs and throat are full of crap, a never-ending cough (to the point where I’m pretty sure I’ll end up puking sometime soon), achy muscles, and skin that’s sensitive to even having clothing touch it (which is unfortunate, since I also have the chills, so sweats must be worn). Just don’t tell me to go out and buy anything, since there’s no way I’m making it up and down my sixth-floor walk-up today.

Cure me, feministe!

Spectrum

One one end of the spectrum, you have dehumanizing language. On the other, you have stuff like this.

Lazy Blogging Against Sexism

Yeah, yeah. It’s 11-something on International Women’s Day, and I haven’t posted anything today. Not that it would get read, what with the latest megathread going on, in which too-clever-by-half boys huffily deny that there’s any sort of threat whatsoever in dropping hints that you know what Jill’s wearing or in posting that you want to lick the sweat off a student at Yale, after you’ve encouraged your buddies to take photos of her at the gym. Oh, no. No threat there at all. No exclusion. No forcing women out of the public sphere.

I’ve actually been holed up in my office until quite recently, finishing a memo I should have had done much earlier in the day, and would have, but for the fact that the law in Alaska on the particular point I was researching is a little thin. But had I finished, I had a post I planned to write on the continuing insistence by quite a number of “progressive” men that “cunt,” among other things, is a particularly non-offensive term despite its history of being hurled as the most rank abuse against the possessors of said cunts, and while it has no meaning whatsoever — none! not a whit! — these men will fight to the death to preserve their right to say this important — nay, vital! — yet somehow meaningless and unoffensive word against the forces of Humorless Feminists the net over.

Fortunately, you will all be spared this post. Because Ilyka’s already gone and written it, and a hundred times better than I could.

A cursory read of the comments at alicublog makes it pretty plain that the commenters are reading Roy as agreeing with their position that it’s totally okay to use “cunt” whenever you want to, because the problem always lies with the silly-ass cunts who get offended when you do so; just like the problem with “nigger” isn’t its oppressive usage history, but rather the rampant-running PC Police who stir up those temperamental black folk to raise a needless fuss about it. This, for example, is fairly typical:

Here’s another way to look at it: The staggering diversity of opinion on what cunt means just on this thread makes its intent cloudy no? Could mean a lot of things — thus, like in MOST THINGS, context matters. And the context of nigger does too — obviously.

But that doesn’t even address the fact that blacks can choose all by themselves what they consider offensive, just as everyone else can.

The “staggering diversity of opinion on what cunt means,” it will not surprise you to learn, is achieved almost entirely from members of the class who have traditionally used the term, and scarcely at all from members of the class against whom it has been used. Pardon my incivility, but fuck your fake diversity, you bubbling leg-dribbles of choleric shit.

So what’m I getting out of this? Chiefly, that there are more ostensible progressives out there than I thought who want to have it both ways. On the one hand, they want to dissociate themselves from assholes like these, feign shock and horror that similar-such behavior could be occuring in our most elite halls of learning, and congratulate themselves on not being one bit like that themselves* because they appreciate and understand context, see.

On the other hand, they want to throw a motherfucking neverending tantrum, weeping and wailing and gnashing teeth all over the internet, anytime someone points out that their understanding of the context is incomplete due to the unavoidable limitations of their own lived experiences–a point which should be obvious, and which any of these jackboot-licking nerds could easily prove or disprove merely by walking up to any large man of African-American descent and explaining to him why he shouldn’t choose to find the n-word offensive. But these whiny-ass tittybabies aren’t going to do that, because deep down they know that’s going to end in an ass-kicking, with the probability of the ass getting kicked being theirs approaching 1.

So let’s take swipes at the dumb cunt feminazis, instead. What can they possibly do about it?

Here’s a hint to those performing mental gymnastics to justify their use of “cunt” as an insult, or floor wax, or dessert topping: when you start to sound like Ann Coulter trying to pass off “faggot” as nothing more than a schoolyard taunt and nothing at all sexual, it’s time to throw in the towel.