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

Month: November 2008

Thank you…

To the kind person who sent me Covering Islam by Edward Said. I don’t know if you want me to use your name on the blog so I’ll keep in anonymous for now, but the gift is much appreciated! I haven’t read a good book in a while, so I’m excited to pick this one up. Thanks!

Beauty and Power

Women are so deeply conditioned to seeing feminine beauty as something fragile that doesn’t take up space, which is why I love seeing representations of femininity that isn’t that of a delicate orchid. It’s interesting to me that many female body builders who work on attaining what are considered masculine traits play up their feminine characteristics, perhaps to counteract the kind of physique that is usually culturally marked male, sometimes to an extreme that appears to be a conscious genderfuck. Whatever the case, the human body is so, so cool.

But a warning: Even though the website is in what appears to be Russian, please don’t bother reading the comments, many of which are vile, and in English.

Arbitrary Sunday Kitteh Blogging




Puddle o’ Kitteh

Originally uploaded by feminaerecta

Jill maintains that her sleek little kittens are the cream of the ketteh crop, but nothing completes a chilly Sunday afternoon such as this one like snuggling up with this fat, whiny muppet.

If you look closely, you can locate his face and his flurfy toes.

Fidelio, unfortunately, does not like having his belly touched, and doing so causes a flurry of violence that leaves one lacerated and bleeding. Part of this is the collection of big, dense, and gnarly nubbins located on his belly, the one part of him I’m not brave enough to brush.

Cat people, help me. Is there any way to get rid of the nubbins without getting him professionally groomed or losing a limb?

More Moral Than Thou?

Huh:

Countries worthy of consideration aren’t those like North Korea and China, where religion is savagely repressed, but those in which people freely choose atheism. In his new book, Society Without God, Phil Zuckerman looks at the Danes and the Swedes—probably the most godless people on Earth. They don’t go to church or pray in the privacy of their own homes; they don’t believe in God or heaven or hell. But, by any reasonable standard, they’re nice to one another. They have a famously expansive welfare and health care service. They have a strong commitment to social equality. And—even without belief in a God looming over them—they murder and rape one another significantly less frequently than Americans do.

Denmark and Sweden aren’t exceptions. A 2005 study by Gregory Paul looking at 18 democracies found that the more atheist societies tended to have relatively low murder and suicide rates and relatively low incidence of abortion and teen pregnancy.

The question looming in my head is whether Bloom’s thesis should be about atheism or secularism, or whether this essay is merely about how much cooler atheists are than Christians.

Every day with the learning!

Shoot, I used to work at the ACLU and I didn’t know the LGBT Project did this – every weekday they compile LGBT news from around the country and post it to their blog. Maybe this is new. Anyway. There’s way more on the website, but here’s just a sampling:

ACLU NEWS
Strauss, et al. v. Horton, et al

Our lawsuit, filed in conjunction with our friends at Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, asking the California Supreme Court to invalidate Prop. 8.  Earlier this week the California Supreme Court announced that it will hear the case. More info in our press release.

Prowel v. Wise Business Forms

The ACLU submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in this case.

  • Pittsburgh City Paper: Gender Gap

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    But Will It Turn Me On?

    The inimitable Sarah Haskins on women and car advertising: [apparently I can’t embed it, so click here]

    I’ve only had a hand in buying one car and thankfully the salesman didn’t latch on to the stereotypical trope of showing me the vanity mirrors and built-in car seats. No, he waited until after the papers were signed, stared at my boobs, and asked me out to dinner. When I refused his invitation, he sort of threw the keys at me. Has anyone else been so lucky?

    Jay Smooth, Stone Fox

    [WARNING: May trigger fangeeks.]

    Friend of Feministe Jay Smooth was named one the Sexiest Men Living in 2008 in Salon’s 3rd annual awards this week, rounding out a list of men who “make us giddy for all the right reasons.” Chuck your Brad Pitts, your George Clooneys, and your Matt Damons, and give me a heaping helping of a confident, feminist dude who challenges his audience to think deeper about the world and the culture around us and does so with impeccable style and a subtle sense of humor.

    Take this past vlog on homosexuality and the closet in hip hop:

    Or one of my personal favorites on how to let people know they’re being racist, or the follow-up, which pretty much cemented my crush.

    Definitely something about the eyebrows.

    Congrats, Jay. We’ll be waiting for your response to these accolades by video in 3… 2… 1…

    My personal runners-up in the Salon contest include Van Jones and Javier Bardem. Who makes your list?

    Waking Up “Post-Racial”

    Latoya at Racialicious has written a really great post about waking up in supposedly “post-racial” America the morning after Obama’s victory. A teaser:

    Over the last few weeks, I’ve read opinion and analysis that just leaves me cold.

    We did not wake up in a new America, though some of us may feel that way. We’ve been the same country we have always been, and the reports now releasing about hate crimes during the election should remind us that while Obama has a decisive win, there is still a very vocal and unhappy minority. I also find it interesting that folks think there will be progress without cost. As if after every civil rights (and now, arguably, post-civil rights) victory all the opposition just melted away, and that people who were avowed segregationists instantly changed their minds and opened their hearts.

    But we all know that did not happen.

    It’s an excellent read, and definitely worth your time.  Go check it out.

    Well Maybe Your Identity Wouldn’t Have Gotten Stolen if You Weren’t So Fat

    This photograph of an ad in a Netherlands train station was snapped by a Shapely Prose reader. It’s an ad for identity theft prevention — in short, the woman in the photograph “loses her head” over seeing a bag of candy, and her distraction allows the man behind her at the ATM to see her personal information and presumably her PIN number.  Because she’s fat.  And fat people, they just love the candy!  Get it.  GET IT????

    Kate  Harding does a much better job than I could of tearing this bullshit to threads:

    This goes the basic “Fatties are obsessed with food” theme one better, adding the message that fatties are infantile (which is a fairly common theme, too, come to think of it). See, all you have to do is dangle a gross-looking bag of candy in front of a fat woman, and she’ll completely forget she’s an adult performing banking functions! (Hey, maybe that explains the correlation between fat and poverty.) Since we all know fatties have no impulse control, adore cheap junk food, and can’t take responsibility for themselves — just like small children! — it makes all the sense in the world!

    And then we have the decapitation. Now, I’m assuming this is part of a series of ads in which other stereotypes also “lose their heads” over seeing something people like them ostensibly enjoy. (I’d bet a whole lot of money there’s one of a young dude losing his head over a hot, barely dressed woman.) So I don’t think they just thought it would be hilarious to cut a fat woman’s head off — though I’m kind of disturbed that they thought the whole “losing your head” premise, expressed this way, was funny at all. But still, for all its cartoonishness, this is a picture of a woman’s goddamned head separated from her body; it’s a violent image. And we’re supposed to laugh at this violent image, because, dude, IT’S SO TRUE! FAT WOMEN CAN’T CONTROL THEMSELVES AROUND CANDY! And also, of course, because fat people are intrinsically funny. Did you see her double chin? SITTING ON THE GROUND? Har har!

    I for one am really fucking tired of seeing women (and people of all genders, but women get it the worst) devalued based on their weight, and fat being used as the butt of a joke — particularly in ways that portray overweight people as stupid, childish, inherently unhealthy and obsessed with food.  It’s not funny, it’s demeaning and it’s bullshit.

    Oh, and by the way, when those completely off-topic and ill-informed, “but it’s unheeeaaalllthy to be fat!!!  Why are you promoting unheeeaaalllthy behavior???” whiners inevitably show up, their comments are going to get deleted. Deal with it.

    h/t Sociological Images