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

Month: May 2010

International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia

Today is the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. I’ve had a pretty intense day, so I hope you will excuse the lack of a substantial post, but I thought it was better marked this way than not at all! You can read about IDAHO at the site, where you can find information on the history of the day, events around the world and lots more. I’d love to hear what some of you are doing to mark the day, readers.

On Hating Kids

Sybil at Bitch PhD is right on the money with this post — the “I hate kids” line is pretty ridiculous, and it’s unfair to expect that kids will never be allowed out in public spaces. Hostility towards children is also, in practice, largely sexist — it’s moms who largely bear the burden of caring for children; it’s moms and female care-givers who are largely stuck inside when children aren’t welcomed in public spaces; and at least in my experience, it’s moms who are disproportionately glared at if their child isn’t perfectly behaved (dads, on the other hand, are considered sweet just for taking the kid out in public).

But that said — and this wasn’t really the topic of Sybil’s post, and the rest of this post isn’t a response to what she’s written — I do think it’s fair to say that some public spaces are, and should be, adult-oriented (again, Sybil isn’t saying otherwise). I live in a part of New York that is very, very kid-friendly, and that is home to a large number of young families. Kids in restaurants are common-place. I’m constantly walking in the street to bypass double-wide strollers on the sidewalk. There are a lot of parks, and those parks are full of children. I used to live in a part of New York (the East Village) that was essentially the opposite — seeing kids was relatively rare, and the population of the neighborhood was much more young-and-single than yuppie-and-parenting. I chose to live where I currently reside for a lot of reasons, and I knew that kids came with the deal. I like kids, and kids are part of society too, so, great. And in my experience, at least in my neighborhood, parents are largely respectful, and kids are so used to being out in public that they generally behave appropriately and accordingly.

However, my neighborhood and those adjacent to it do have a reputation for housing entitled parents who think that kids belong everywhere. I largely think that stereotype is unwarranted. I also think that it’s appropriate to bring kids most places — almost all places, even, as a general rule. But that depends on the kid and the situation. And you know, I may be a curmudgeon, but if I’m paying more than $100 to eat at Cafe Boloud (or any restaurant, really — not everyone can afford $100 meals, and we still deserve to eat out in relative peace) and the people at the table next to me have a toddler who makes a game of repeatedly dropping her silverware on the floor and making the waiter pick it up, I’m going to be really annoyed. And I’m also going to think that they’re incredibly rude — not just to the other diners, but to the wait staff who have a whole room to take care of but who are forced to devote disproportionate time, attention and effort to the family that thinks it’s a-ok to make waiters bend down and pick up dropped fork after dropped fork because the baby likes it. Which isn’t to say that no one under the age of 18 should ever eat at a fancy restaurant, or that families with kids should be relegated to McDonalds or Chuck E Cheese. I think it’s really important, if you can, to expose your child to a variety of situations, experiences and cuisines. And since all of us have to share public space, tolerance and patience is also incredibly important. It’s ridiculous to expect that parents should have to pay for a babysitter or not go out; it’s ridiculous to think that public space is adults-only; it’s ridiculous to expect that every child allowed in public is going to be 100% well-behaved at all times. Sometimes a kid is going to screech or do something naughty or annoying; sometimes an adult is going to be an asshole and is going to talk loudly on his cell phone, or get drunk and do something stupid. The deal with public space is that sometimes we have to tolerate certain annoyances.

But there are also lines, and just like I’m going to give a withering death-stare to the dude yelling into his Bluetooth in the middle of a restaurant, I’m probably also not going to be thrilled with the parent who lets his kid repeatedly race around the tables instead of staying put. Just like I get really annoyed at the people who feel the need to show up with a group of 8 to a busy brunch spot where there’s a two-hour wait because they can’t possibly have a meal without everyone they know and they can’t be bothered to go to a place where large parties are easy accommodated, I’m annoyed at the family who shows up to a tiny trendy restaurant where the wait is already two hours long and asks for a table for 8, because they have half of the local soccer team with them. Just like if a patron makes a big stink about not being able to find something they like off the menu and insist that they get something specially-made to their tastes I think to myself, “Go somewhere else! Menus are available online and you can pretty much see if there’s something you can/want to eat,” if a parent is indignant because a restaurant doesn’t offer a kid’s menu, I think to myself, “Go somewhere else.” It’s one thing to ask for plain spaghetti at an Italian restaurant that serves spaghetti anyway and just has to not put sauce on it; it’s another to show up at a nice sushi place and be just shocked that there isn’t mac n cheese on the menu.

Read More…Read More…

Shame on you.

Gabe says so perfectly what I also think about tea partiers, after one of them — Caleb Howe, a right-wing writer regularly featured on sites like RedState.org — taunted Roger Ebert for having cancer:

But I will also say this: come on, tea party movement. I have worked really hard to remain open to the fact that we live in a big and complicated world where millions of people (billions of people?) have vastly different ideas about how things should work, and everyone is entitled to those opinions. And this particular outburst is easy to explain away as the disgusting work of one misguided man. Except that it isn’t. And it is pretty clear at this point that your loose-knit political organization is a bastion for actual hatred. Cool! Cool loose-knit political organization!

It’s one thing to be angry about HUMAN BEINGS HAVING ACCESS TO AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE. I can definitely understand why you would be so upset about that. BOOO! They should get sick and die by their own bootstraps, right? Besides, insurance companies are neat! And they need regular Americans like you and me to DEFEND THEM FROM THE MEAN GOVERNMENT. Definitely. You guys have got it so figured out it’s crazy. Just kidding! Looks like my communist doctor gave me a prescription for Sarcasm Pills. (To be taken with ugh.)

But this? And this? And this? And this? And this? Shame on you. Shame on you so much.


It’s also really, really worth reading this piece by an Esquire writer who did a profile on Roger Ebert, and now responds to the hateful things that Caleb Howe has said about him. Ebert is a class act, and has been an amazing proponent of feminist thought and art. I like to think that there must be a special place in Hell for people like Caleb Howe.

Elena Kagan and banning military recruitment on campus

I’m not sure if Peter Beinhart is being intentionally intellectually dishonest in this column, or if he just doesn’t actually understand the issues involved in the decision of several law schools to ban military recruiters from campus. He takes Elena Kagan to task for her role, as Dean of Harvard Law School, in “banning” the legal branch of the U.S. military from coming and conducting on-campus interviews. In fact, Kagan didn’t actually ban the military at all — she accommodated them, just not through the Career Services office. And unlike other top law schools, which actually did block the JAG Corps from on-campus recruiting, Kagan allowed JAG recruiters to come to Harvard and interview students through the Harvard Law School Veterans Association, rather than through the career center.

For context, many law schools have on-campus interview periods wherein the school hosts a range of employers and has students sign up for interview slots. At my law school — which also banned military recruiters for a time, although my understanding is that we actually banned them — there was a week wherein private law firms were hosted, and a week in which public interest organizations were hosted. It’s how most (or at least many) students secured employment for the summer and after graduation. It entails significant effort and expense on behalf of the school to organize the entire process.

Law schools like Harvard and NYU also have strong anti-discrimination policies, which state that they will not host employers that discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc. And those policies are reasonable — they emphasize that the school will not use its resources to host employers that discriminate against some students. If an employer refuses to hire women or African-Americans, the school sure as hell shouldn’t use its resources — resources that are provided in large part by students’ tuition dollars — to host that employer.

But Beinhart thinks this is about the morality of the military:

In a previous Beast column, I had criticized Kagan’s action as dean, arguing that barring recruiters from Harvard Law School because the military discriminates against gays was as counterproductive as banning ROTC from Harvard during Vietnam. That comparison, my correspondent insisted, “rests on a fundamental category mistake…what happened at Harvard Law School [during Kagan’s tenure] was not anything like the anti-military policies of the ‘70s that were directed at the military because they were the military.”

But the decision by Harvard and other elite schools to ban ROTC in the 1970s was not “directed at the military because they were the military.” It was directed at the military because it was fighting an unjust war in Vietnam. Then, the military was pursuing an immoral war in Southeast Asia; today, the military is pursuing an immoral policy against lesbians and gay men. The question was, and is, whether banning the military from campus constitutes the right response.

Read More…Read More…

Thursday LOST Roundtable: Across the Sea

Spoilers below!

A close-up photo of the Man in Black with blood and bruises on his face.

This week on LOST, we learned more about Jacob, MIB, and the mysteries of the island. Read our discussion below and add your own thoughts and theories in the comments, just be sure not to include spoilers to the last 3.5 hours of LOST!

Read More…Read More…

An Underage Double Standard?

This morning, it seems I couldn’t turn anywhere without hearing about this ZOMG MILEY CYRUS LAP DANCE VIDEO!!!!!111!!!1!

So I watched it and, for one, it’s not actually a lap dance. It’s Miley Cyrus, at 16, grinding on Adam Shankman at some party. Adam is a gay, 40-something, judge of SYTYCD, producer dude. He makes all those Step Up movies (I haven’t watched any of them, so that’s all I know).

I was… confused? I guess mostly because I expected Miley giving or getting a lap dance with a teen and instead got this. I was certainly grossed out, but I didn’t think much of it.

Until a couple of minutes later when I saw this headline: “LT’s Defense: No Sex, Just Masturbation.” For those who don’t have to keep up with the news for a living, Lawrence Taylor (LT) is some football player who allegedly sexually assaulted a 16-year-old. At first, he and his wife were denying it, and now apparently he has clarified that they engaged in some sort of “masturbatory act,” whatever that means.

It got me thinking about the reactions I’ve seen to both of these stories. Most of the responses I’ve seen to the Miley thing are along the lines of “ew, but whatever, he’s gay and it’s not like that!” Most of the responses I’ve seen to the allegations against LT – other than “SHE’S LYING!,” of course – are “put him away! pervert! why was he anywhere near that girl?”

While I understand that Adam Shankman did not rape Miley Cyrus, shouldn’t this make people more uncomfortable? I ask this of myself as well, because I was also unfazed. I get that Adam Shankman is gay, and apparently he thinks of her as a little sister (which, ew, I do not grind on my relatives)… but he’s still a 44-year-old man grinding with a 16-year-old girl.

Do you think there’s a difference? Should there be one? Sorry, that’s not what I’m asking. What I’m asking is if people should have a stronger reaction to the Miley thing despite the fact that there’s no alleged sexual assault in play.

Feministe Feedback: Reading for an Eight-Year-Old Exploring Her Gender?

There is a background of lots of circles of pink, yellow and blue. A young white girl has her hair in two plaits with red bows on the ends and is wearing a white and red blouse. Her hand is on her chin and she looks thoughtful. Bright friendly type says 'feministe feedback' at the bottom.A reader writes in asking for some assistance:

We always speak freely with our daughter about things like the difference between sex and gender and we try to emphasize that she is free to define her own gender in a manner in which she sees fit. Being two cisgendered, hetero people, this isn’t always easy, but we are doing the best we can to keep our privilege in check as we approach this. We try to emphasize that gender is fluid, on a chromatic spectrum, not a binary structure.

Recently, she wore a tie to school and was picked on by a boy who called her a “half boy”, to which she replied “So?”. We were proud that she had the strength to say so, but she did ask us what was wrong with being a “half boy”. Of course we told her nothing was wrong with it, but we are finding that as she explores gender identity more, and as she moves through it, we don’t always have all of the answers.

She would really love some age appropriate reading material to help her through this exploration. She is eight, and in second grade, with a reading level that is about two grade levels higher, but given the sensitivity of the material, I am more concerned about age appropriateness. We use Robie Harris books for development, and she really likes those. I was hoping that the Feministe crowd could suggest some more material that might be helpful.

What say you, readers? Can you supply our reader’s kid (who sounds rather fabulous!) with any age-appropriate reading material that will help with her gender exploration?

Don’t forget to send your questions to feministe@gmail.com

Why don’t we pay attention to women in the kitchen?

Because men are “chefs,” but women are “cooks.” I do love this article, especially the conclusion:

As Cohen — not to mention any number of thoughtful, well-reasoned articles on the subject — points out, there’s a sore disparity between the number of women running kitchens, and the number of women receiving acknowledgment for same. (Nominal efforts to address the achievement gap, like last year’s Barbie-hued “Women in Food” James Beard Awards, don’t exactly help.) Flat-out sexism is almost never directly addressed in these articles, and so it is that the conversation tends to come back to wondering what it is that’s wrong with women, rather than what it is that’s wrong with the system. There’s the “women cook to nurture, men cook to win” line; the insistence that a cooks’ hard-living lifestyle doesn’t jive with the family oriented preferences of the weaker sex; and our favorite, the frankly ridiculous notion that girls just don’t like to play with fire and knives as much as boys do.

But of course, women can play with fire, and they do it brilliantly. Chefs like Cohen — not to mention folks like April Bloomfield, Gabrielle Hamilton, or brand-new Beard Award winner Koren Grieveson — poke all kinds of holes in these theories; they’re as talented, badass, nuanced, tireless, and innovative as any men cooking today. And yet Cohen and Hamilton, who work independently, are largely missing from the breathless media coverage of all things food-related, and Bloomfield and Grieveson, who have managed to crack into the club, both cook under the aegis of men. Ken Friedman and Paul Kahan are emeritus members of the culinary boys’ club if anyone is, and their long shadows hang over their protégés’ successes.

The more a chef is written about, the more likely he is to win awards, and vice versa — so being excluded from the media-awards continuum hits female chefs coming and going. “Why would an investor back a female chef in a restaurant?” asks Cohen. “He knows that she won’t get the hype and attention a male chef will get.” Hype seems to be the key here, not talent: Women just don’t seem to come by it as easily as men do. That points to there being an outside bias, not an inherent problem; it’s a systemwide failure of inclusion. If Bloomfield, Grieveson, Hamilton, or Cohen were given the kind of attention (and subsequent funding, and subsequent more attention) lavished on young turks like Nate Appleman or David Chang, they could easily achieve comparable rock-star status. Even better, it would be without being ghettoized as “women chefs.”